Many (small) businesses, one site

[Nick Mellor]

Hi all,

Three small hardware shops might each have a username and business
back-end, and a front-end for their customers to order online. They
might usefully share some data (such as common hardware items that all
hardware stores are likely to sell, keyed with a common id) and want
other information kept strictly private.

Each business needs their own online shop and their own "look"--
perhaps provided by a different set of templates.

Using the model of "software as a service" (SAAS) I want to make it as
easy to create a new online hardware store as it is to "sign up" on
any other website. (The business model might be: try free for a month,
thereafter $x per month.)

Then there might well be 300 hardware stores or 3000 or even more.

As the numbers increase, using one database and one or a small number
of processes to serve many small businesses becomes increasingly
attractive.

Each of the many businesses would need Satchmo to manage their shop,
filtering just their data from the larger database.

Has anyone used Satchmo in this kind of context? How did you go about
it?

Best,

Nick