Step 02 // Theme → Platform

A theme is the look.
A platform is the business.

First question: what are you? A digital newspaper, a food truck, a booking desk, a magazine, a podcast, a tax office, a manufacturing line — the platform is whatever the business actually is. Tell us how it runs and we put the working parts inside the theme — booking, order-ahead, invoicing, customer intake, the staff back office. What you do, plus what we build so you do it better. That is the whole idea.

Tell us your business flow → Pick a theme first → Already have a site ↓
You keep the keys & the data No rebuild if you have a site Second opinions free

The five pills are the pitch order, not a rule — start wherever the business actually is.

The themeThe look — yours, or one of ours, or the site you already have.
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Your flowHow customers find you, book, pay, and come back — and how staff runs it.
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The partsBooking, ordering, invoicing, intake, accounts — the pieces that do the work.
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Your platformA site you run the business on — not a brochure somebody updates for you.
How it goesFour steps. You talk, we build.Pick the look · tell us the flow · we put the parts in · you run it.

No discovery deck, no sixty-page spec. You describe how the business runs in plain words and we turn it into working parts inside the site.

Pick the look

Choose a theme from the gallery, bring a theme you bought somewhere else, or keep the website you already have. All three work.

Tell us the flow

How does a customer find you, book, pay, and come back? What does your staff do all day? That is the spec — in your words.

We put the parts in

The booking engine, the order-ahead, the invoice flow, the customer accounts, the login-protected staff view — built into the theme, matched to your flow.

You run it

Your login, your data, your domain. Change the price, 86 the special, check the books — it is a tool you operate, not a page you beg someone to update.

What they do → what we give themThe parts, by business.Booking, order-ahead, invoicing, intake — eight business shapes, one recipe.

Every platform is the same recipe with different ingredients: the flow your business already has, plus the parts that take the busywork out of it. A few examples:

You take appointments

Booking that runs itself

Salons, barbers, trainers, clinics — customers pick a slot, get reminded, and no-shows drop. Your calendar is the schedule, not a phone that never stops.

We put in → online booking, reminders, staff calendar
You sell food or goods

Order-ahead that is actually live

Menu or catalog with real data behind it. Change a price or 86 an item and it is gone everywhere, right now — not when somebody edits a PDF.

We put in → live menu/catalog, order-ahead, kitchen view
You quote and bill

Estimates to invoice, one flow

Trades and services — the quote the customer approved becomes the invoice, tracked to paid. No retyping the same job into three places.

We put in → estimate builder, invoicing, payment tracking
You run memberships

Members, classes, check-ins

Gyms, studios, martial arts — sign-up, class booking, streaks and challenges, and a membership list you own instead of renting from an app.

We put in → memberships, class schedule, check-in log
You enroll and update parents

Enrollment without the paper

Daycares and programs — intake forms, waitlists, and parent updates in one place, so the office stops chasing signatures.

We put in → enrollment flow, parent updates, waitlist
You intake clients or cases

Intake that sorts itself

Professional services — the form a client fills out lands sorted, routed, and searchable. Nothing lives only in somebody’s inbox.

We put in → intake forms, case pipeline, client portal
Your stock is never the same twice

A catalog that handles one-offs

Makers and retailers — leather goods, produce, whatever is on the bench this week. Built for variation, not a warehouse SKU list.

We put in → flexible catalog, stock notes, custom orders
Your staff needs the real picture

A back office, not a binder

Every platform gets the login-protected view your crew actually works from — today’s orders, bookings, flags — separate from what customers see.

We put in → staff dashboard, roles, activity log
You make the content

A channel that is actually yours

Magazine, podcast, web show, newsletter — episodes, archives, memberships and sponsor slots on your domain, so the audience belongs to you instead of a feed you rent.

We put in → episode & archive engine, memberships, sponsor slots
Running right nowWant one? We make you one too.The 209 Gaz and ETECH — platforms we built and run ourselves, out in the open.

These are not mockups — they are platforms we built and run ourselves, out in the open. Jump on ours, or start your own — either way you are looking at the thing before you buy the thing.

Live · epicgazette.com

The 209 Gaz — a paper a town can run

Nine towns, one interactive paper: news, events, combo deals, classifieds, a contributor desk, and every card reviewed before it prints. We run the 209 edition. Your town wants a paper? Jump on ours — or run your own zip.

Jump on the Gaz 209 → Start your own →
Live · epicappsolutions.com/etech

ETECH — a magazine that flips like paper

A digital magazine with real page turns — features, gear reviews, a masthead, the whole ritual — built as a platform, not a PDF. Want to run a magazine? We build the digital side, and can even set you up with a printer.

Flip ours → Start your own →
Magazine · podcast · web showFor the ones making the content.Same platform tech, a different coat of paint — a magazine, a show, or a directory of creators. We run ours out in the open.

A creator’s platform is still the same recipe — the look, the flow, the parts — it just publishes instead of booking. A magazine that flips, a show with an archive you own, a directory that turns your town’s creators into a destination. To us it is one engine; to your audience it is three different things — and that is the point.

Live · /mags/ + /etech/

A magazine that flips like paper

Real page turns, memberships, ad pages, paywall or print — your brand on the engine that runs ETECH and the Gazette’s issues. Six demo covers in the kit.

Flip the demos → Start yours →
Ours · epicappsolutions.com

A show that lives on your domain

Podcast or web show — episode pages, guest slots, sponsor blocks, an archive you own. Ours is The Room: four rotating shows on the front page, recording soon.

See The Room → Start yours →
Live · on the Gazette

A directory for your creators

YouTubers & More curates the local channels, streams and podcasts worth watching — submit-a-creator intake, editorial policy, the town becomes the channel.

See ours → Start yours →
Merch & dropshipMerch without the warehouse.Five years ago this was boxes of shirts in a garage. Now it is an upload and a margin — Shopify is the platform we run it on.

This one is not a theme — it is the platform itself. Shopify has been our merchandise and dropship lane for years, and the honest pitch is how much easier it got. Five years ago, putting your logo on a shirt meant becoming a part-time warehouse. Today it is roughly a $30 monthly plan and a print shop that does the work.

Five years ago

Merch meant inventory.

  • Order a run of shirts up front — and guess the sizes before a single sale.
  • Pay for stock first. Boxes in the garage, the closet, the corner of the shop.
  • Pack and ship every order yourself. Refunds, lost packages, the whole headache.
  • Eat whatever did not sell. The margin went in the dumpster with the wrong sizes.
Now — the Shopify lane

Send a picture. Name your profit.

  • About $30 a month runs the store — that is the whole barrier to entry.
  • Hook it to a print shop: they print the shirt, ship it, and deal with the headache.
  • You never touch a box — no inventory, no size-guessing, no post office line.
  • Same lane handles dropship goods too, not just printed tees.
You are not trying to get rich on T-shirts — you are not a retail shirt printer and you should not have to be one. It is a little extra money plus the marketing of your name walking around town. That is the whole point — and it finally works, because the inventory risk that used to kill small merch is gone.

Already have a Shopify or Wix store? Even better — nothing has to change. We integrate through a code repository you own: our code talks to your code through the platform’s own doors, we never need your store login, and the repo is yours to keep. Outgrow the platform later and that same codebase becomes the seed of a custom system. The Loading Dock on the front page →

Get my merch lane → See a real Shopify build →
Already have a website?Started with a theme — or already have a site? We add on.WordPress, Wix, hand-coded, half-finished — keep your domain, we add the parts.

You do not need a rebuild to get a platform. If you started with one of our themes, bought one somewhere else, or have a site that has been sitting there for years — we put the working parts into what is already there. WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, hand-coded, half-finished — bring it as it is.

And if what you have is giving you trouble — slow, broken, held hostage by somebody who will not call you back — that is an add-on job too. We stabilize it first, then build on it.

Add on to my site → Who has the keys? Run the audit →
KEEP
Your domain, content & rankingsWe build onto what exists. The address and the search history stay yours.
FIX
Trouble counts as a starting pointSlow, broken, or abandoned mid-build — we stabilize first, extend second.
ADD
Just the parts you needBooking without a rebuild. Invoicing without a migration. One part or five.
OWN
You keep the keysYour logins, your data, your host. Nobody holds the site over your head — including us.
Free second set of eyesNot sure what somebody is selling you?Send the quote or the proposal — line by line, plain English, free.

Bring us the quote, the proposal, the invoice, or the email full of words like “optimization retainer.” We break it down line by line, in plain English — free. What it actually is, what it should cost, what you can skip, and what is missing that should be there.

And if you want, we get on the call with them and translate both ways — also free. Sometimes the vendor is fine and the pitch is just bad. Sometimes it is not. Either way you walk in knowing which is which.

Send us the quote → Get the proposal checklist →

Why free? Because a customer who understands the quote is a better customer — for us or for whoever earned the job honestly. And because the checklist we grade against is public, so you can run it yourself before you ever call.

Real lines off real quotes we have decoded. The jargon is rarely the expensive part — the missing ownership clause is.

Screens, kiosks & menu boardsNeeds hardware? You buy it — we never sell it.We spec it and hand you the link — you pay the vendor’s price, in your name, and we install it and keep it running.

Some platforms want a screen — a menu board, a check-in tablet, a kitchen display, a wall of signage. When they do, we pull up the suggested gear and hand you the link: you buy it direct, at the vendor’s price, in your name. We are service, not retail — we do not resell hardware and we do not mark it up, so the gear never carries a quiet percentage.

You buy it at that price; we install it and fix it. If it breaks under warranty you deal with the vendor — your name is on their books, not ours — and when the replacement lands we come back and install the next one. The full policy lives at epicappsolutions.com/work-with-us/#hardware.

One call gets both founders

Tell us what your business does all day.

We will tell you what the platform version looks like, what it costs, and whether you even need us — sometimes the honest answer is the free theme and a Saturday.

Open a case → Call 209.672.0033 Browse themes