Retușescu found us the way a lot of our best clients do — a Google search, a scroll through our reviews, and a phone call. On paper, the ask was simple: a new website and a developer who actually understood how to wire up a Sameday courier integration. Once we got into the details, it turned out to be a much more interesting project than that.
When “Does It All” Isn’t the Same as “Does It Right”
The existing Retușescu site had been built in Elementor by someone whose specialty was SEO, not development. He wasn’t a bad person to work with, and the site wasn’t a disaster — but it’s a pattern we run into often enough that we’ve written about it before: hire the specialist the job actually needs, not the generalist who’s willing to take it on. A developer who’s really an SEO consultant (or vice versa) will usually get you most of the way there. “Most of the way” isn’t where you want to be when the core of your business runs through a shipping integration.
That gap became obvious fast. We got on a call with Retușescu and their outgoing developer before starting anything, mostly to understand what had already been attempted. We didn’t push or corner anyone — we just let him talk us through how he thought the Sameday integration should work. Within a few minutes it was clear we weren’t talking to someone with hands-on technical experience, and that he was steering the conversation harder than the problem required, likely because he didn’t want to lose the client.
The Problem Nobody Had Solved
Here’s the part that made this project genuinely tricky: Retușescu repairs clothing. That means the logistics run backwards from almost every e-commerce integration out there. The customer isn’t receiving a package — they’re the one sending it in for repair. The previous approach had been to bolt WooCommerce and the standard Sameday plugin on top of the site, built around the assumption that the client is always the recipient. It simply wasn’t built for a returns-style flow, because it was never designed to be one.
We asked for the Sameday API documentation — the same documentation the previous developer had already been given — and it took about one read-through to see what was needed: this had to be built on Sameday’s return service, not the standard delivery service. Small distinction on paper. Completely different implementation in practice.
Building It Custom, From the Homepage Up
Since the site needed a full redesign anyway, we didn’t spend time trying to preserve what was live. We started clean. Once the homepage was in place, we built a reusable form component in Breakdance, added the custom database tables needed to store order data, and built the Sameday integration from scratch — covering both locker returns and courier returns.
When a customer places an order, they choose one of three ways to send in the garment that needs repairing:
- Drop it off at a locker
- Schedule a Sameday courier pickup
- Request a fast local courier if they’re in Bucharest or Ilfov (an internal-only option, purely for collection)
Depending on which option they pick, the form adjusts to collect exactly what that flow needs — locker selection, address details, and so on. Once submitted, everything lands in an email along with two action buttons: Accept order or Decline order. Accepting triggers the full AWB generation on the Sameday return service and fires off an SMS through the sensSMS.ro API. Declining simply flags the order as cancelled, so nobody accidentally processes something that shouldn’t go through.
Almost everything ended up custom-built rather than plugin-stitched, which meant fewer moving parts, fewer conflicts, and a site that was genuinely lighter than what it replaced.
The Numbers: From a Plateau to 2,000+ Clicks
Growth wasn’t instant, but it was measurable. In the weeks immediately following launch, both impressions and the clicks generated from them climbed by roughly 30%. That’s worth putting in context: the old site’s best-ever Search Console result was 1,200 clicks, a record that had gone stale with no growth behind it. We took over development around six months into that plateau, and it took eight months in total from that 1,200-click peak to finally break past it and reach 1,500. From there, momentum built fast — another eight days took the site to 1,800, and three months after that it crossed 2,000. Growth kept going after that, just at a more gradual pace.
That plateau isn’t a flaw in the build — it’s just physics. Every site built on organic growth alone eventually levels off if it isn’t paired with fresh content on a regular basis. A fast, well-structured, technically sound site earns you the ceiling. Content is what keeps pushing that ceiling higher.
Round Two: 2026
Retușescu came back to us this year to take things further. This time we built them a fully custom order management dashboard — internal notes, order statuses, statistics, complete order details, and live tracking of where each garment physically is in the repair process. Same philosophy as the first build: custom where it counts, nothing bolted on just because a plugin exists for it.
The Moral of the Story
The most expensive mistake in this project had already been made before we ever got involved — hiring someone whose skill was adjacent to the job, not squarely on it. It wasn’t malicious, and it wasn’t incompetence in the field he actually knew. It was a mismatch. The fix wasn’t a bigger budget or a longer timeline; it was understanding the actual shape of the problem — a returns flow, not a delivery flow — before writing a single line of code. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do on a project is stop, read the documentation properly, and ask what the business genuinely needs instead of what’s fastest to bolt on.
