About
A small studio building the systems most agencies won't.
Cauldron Studio is operational engineering for e-commerce — the backend systems, automations, and data infrastructure that serious stores run on. We work narrowly, deliberately, and on the parts of the business most operators only think about when something breaks.
What we believe
The most valuable e-commerce work is operational, not promotional.
Storefronts and ads get the attention. The systems behind them get the value. Most agencies invert this. We don't.
Software is what happens after you understand the problem.
We spend more time mapping current state and writing scope than we do writing code. That ratio is the work.
The team that inherits the system matters more than the team that builds it.
We write documentation for the engineer who joins your team in two years and has to extend what we built. That standard is the difference between systems people use and systems people rewrite.
Good systems have failure modes, and good engineers name them out loud.
No system is reliable in absolute terms. Reliable systems are ones whose failure modes are known, named, monitored, and recoverable. We design for that.
We say no to most work.
We don't do design, copy, paid media, or rebrands. We refer clients to people who do those things well. The narrowness is the point.
Who runs it
Cauldron Studio is run by Gil Calderon.
For several years I've led digital operations at a long-established culinary bookstore in New York that ships 12,000 specialist SKUs internationally. I oversaw their migration from WordPress to Shopify, then spent the years after replacing brittle third-party apps with internal tools that actually fit how the staff works. That experience is most of what Cauldron Studio is built on.
The same gap kept appearing in every operationally complex business I worked inside: the tools brought in as solutions are overwrought, demand the workflow mold to them, or create more work than they remove. They depend on whoever happens to be the most technical person in the room, and when that person leaves, the system goes with them.
I'm most useful to companies that sell real things — books, garments, food, products — where technology isn't the point. I came up in UX and frontend design before going deeper on operations and engineering, which tends to make design, development, and operations feel like one continuous problem rather than three.
I live in New York. I'm fascinated by how people work, and why they work the way they work. That fascination is the whole studio.
How we engage
The operational specifics of how we work. We've found these patterns serve clients best, but we're flexible where the work demands it.
- Communication
- A shared Slack channel for day-to-day. One 30-minute call per week during active engagements. We don't schedule status meetings.
- Demos
- Working software, every Friday during a Build. You see what we've actually shipped, not slides about what we're going to ship.
- Documentation
- Real, written, version-controlled. You own it on day one. We update it as the system evolves.
- Scope changes
- Always written, always priced, always your decision. No "we just added a few things" surprise invoices.
- Handoff
- Every engagement ends with a handoff session and a 30-day support window. We want the system to outlive our involvement.
Where we are
Cauldron Studio LLC is based in New York. We work with clients across the United States, Canada, and the UK, primarily remotely.
For clients in or near New York, we're happy to spend a day on-site at your warehouse or office during the discovery phase of an engagement. We've found that one good day of in-person mapping is worth a week of Zoom calls.
Got a system that's creaking?
A 30-minute call. A real diagnosis. No pitch deck.
Book a call →Or email us at hello@cauldronstudio.com.