A vet-owned company making fresh therapeutic diets for dogs and cats, on subscription. In 2024 they moved their technology from an outside dev team to one person.
The situation
Nine & Line is a veterinarian-owned company making fresh therapeutic diets for dogs and cats. For years they paid an outside development group for their technology. The work started well, then slowed.
The founders realized they needed someone technical on the team: one person who would own the whole system, from the store to the vet side to the ops side and everything underneath, and still be there years later.
At a glance
- Sector
- Pet nutrition
- Based
- New Jersey
- Since
- 2024
- Role
- Technical partner
- Storefront
- Vet portal
- Ops dashboard
- Shopify
- Next.js
- Python
- Postgres
- AWS
What we did
- 2024Took over the technologyTook over from the outside team, fixed what was breaking, and then rebuilt the store and the systems behind it so a change goes live in minutes and I know before customers do if something breaks.
- 2025Built the vet portal and the ops dashboardPartner veterinarians approve and sign off on diets in their own portal. The ops team runs the week from a dashboard built for them: orders, subscriptions, customers and approvals in one place.
- 2026Subscriptions in house, a new storefrontSubscriptions moved in house, built on Shopify's own subscription tools, retiring a service that took 1% of every sale. Weekly dispatch dropped from half a day to ten minutes. A redesigned storefront ships this fall.
What changed
| Measure | 2024 | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs the technology | 2024An outside dev team | NowOne technical partner |
| Ordering | 2024One-time orders only | NowSubscriptions, built in house, no third-party fee |
| Vet approvals | 2024Over email | NowIn the vet portal, signed there |
| Ops tools | 2024Shopify exports and spreadsheets | NowOne dashboard built for the team |
| Weekly dispatch | 2024Half a day, by hand | Now10 minutes in the dashboard |
| Site updates | 2024Once a week | NowMost days, any one undone in minutes |
Where it is now
Still a client, two years in. Releases go out most days, and the founders spend their time on diets and customers, not on the technology.
Sound like your business?
Thirty minutes by video, nothing to prepare. Tell me what your business runs on and what isn't working.