Stella Brands Automated a Million-Lid-a-Day Operation. Here Is How.
The orders were there. The system was not. DesignNBuy built one. The intake, the approvals, and the production workflow - end to end.
40%
Reduction in order errors
Manual data entry was the source of most mistakes. Removing it from the intake process removed most of the errors.
30%
Improvement in turnaround time
Structured approval and proofing stages replaced an email-based process that was stalling production at every round.
1M+
Custom K-Cup lids produced daily
The volume Stella Brands operates at — and the reason a manual system was no longer viable.
0
Manual status calls needed
Customers now track orders, upload artwork, and receive real-time updates through a self-service portal.
Over a Million Custom K-Cup Lids a Day. No Automated Workflow. Until Now.
When You Produce a Million Lids a Day, Managing Orders by Email Is Not a Workflow. It Is a Risk.
Stella Brands is not a standard print shop.
Founded in Las Vegas in 2014 by Brent Patterson, Stella was built on a specific insight: when Keurig's patents expired, the market for private label K-Cup co-packing would open — and the business that could offer low minimum order quantities with in-house digital printing would have a structural advantage. By 2019, Stella had pioneered digital lid printing and co-packing under one roof, the first in the market to do so. By 2022, they had launched in-house BPI certified compostable pod lidding, again first to market.
The result was a business producing over a million custom-printed K-Cup lids per day, each order requiring unique artwork, specific lid specifications, and accurate production routing.
The operational problem was that none of this had a system behind it.
Orders came in by email. Details were tracked in spreadsheets. Follow-ups happened over the phone. When a customer needed to check the status of a job, someone at Stella had to look it up manually and respond. When artwork needed approval, it went back and forth over email. When an order had a discrepancy, finding it meant tracing back through inboxes and call notes.
At low volume, this is manageable. At a million lids a day, it compounds fast. Errors crept in at every handoff. Turnaround times stretched because approvals waited in inboxes. And as demand grew, the process that had carried the business to this point became the thing holding it back.
Stella Brands needed a system that matched the scale of what they were already producing.
Three Phases. One Complete Ordering Experience.
Replacing the Inbox With a Centralised Order System
The first layer of the problem was order intake.
DesignNBuy implemented a centralised web-to-print platform that replaced the email-and-spreadsheet workflow entirely. Customers now place orders through a structured flow — artwork uploaded, specifications confirmed, order submitted. Every order enters the system with the information it needs to move to production. No manual re-entry. No information lost in a thread.
The impact was immediate. Removing manual data entry at intake removed the primary source of errors. Order accuracy improved by 40%.
Products now managed through the platform:
Digital Printed K-Cup Lids
Custom die-cut lidding for single-serve coffee pods, ordered through a structured flow with artwork upload, specification confirmation, and automated job routing.
Roll Stock & Flexible Packaging
Custom roll stock for co-packing operations, with the same structured intake and approval process — no plate charges, no manual re-entry.
Compostable Pod Lidding
BPI certified compostable lids, first to market in-house — managed through the same platform as standard lidding with no separate workflow.
Automating the Approval and Proofing Workflow
Getting an order into the system was only half the problem. The other half was what happened next.
Under the previous setup, design approvals and proofing rounds lived in email chains. A customer would receive a proof, mark it up, reply, and wait. Stella's team tracked where each job was in the approval cycle manually, chasing confirmations and managing revisions across dozens of active orders simultaneously.
DesignNBuy built a structured approval workflow into the platform. Proofs are generated and sent through the system. Customers review and approve — or request revisions — within the platform. Stella's team can see the status of every job, every approval, and every outstanding action in one view.
Turnaround times improved by 30%.
Giving Customers Self-Service Access
A significant portion of Stella's inbound communications had nothing to do with new orders — it was customers checking on existing ones. Where is my job? Has my artwork been approved? When will it ship?
Every one of those questions was being answered manually.
DesignNBuy built a client self-service portal giving customers 24/7 access to their order history, job status, artwork uploads, and real-time updates. The volume of inbound enquiries dropped. The team's time shifted from answering status questions to managing production.
Building a Platform That Scales With the Business
The final requirement was not a feature — it was a foundation.
Stella Brands was not trying to solve a current problem and stop there. They were building for continued growth — more clients, larger orders, more product lines. The platform needed to onboard new clients without adding operational overhead and scale order volume without scaling headcount proportionally.
DesignNBuy configured the platform with that flexibility in mind. New clients are onboarded through the same structured flow. Larger orders move through the same automated stages. The system absorbs volume that the old manual process could not have handled.
On the Ground in Las Vegas: What We Saw
When the DesignNBuy team visited Stella Brands' Las Vegas facility, the transformation was visible in how the operation ran. Smoother print workflows. Faster production. A team no longer spending its day chasing order confirmations and answering status calls.
The visit also opened up the next chapter. In conversation with the Stella Brands team, new requirements emerged — feature enhancements and platform extensions that would take the system further. For a business that has consistently been first to market, the platform needs to keep pace.
That is the nature of this kind of partnership. The build is not a handoff. It is the beginning of a working relationship.
If You Are Running a High-Volume Print Operation on Emails and Spreadsheets, the System Is the Problem.
Order intake by email, approvals in threads, status updates handled by your team. These are not workflow quirks. They are structural constraints — and at scale, they cost you accuracy, turnaround time, and capacity.
Your order volume has outgrown your intake process
When orders arrive by email and get logged in a spreadsheet, every new order is a manual task. At low volume that is manageable. At high volume it is a source of errors, delays, and lost information. A structured intake flow means every order enters the system correctly — the first time, every time.
Approvals should not live in an inbox
An email-based proofing process does not scale. When every approval round is a back-and-forth thread, jobs stall, revisions get lost, and production waits. A workflow-based approval system gives your team visibility across every active job and gives your customers a faster, cleaner experience.
Your customers should not need to call you to check on their order
Every inbound status enquiry is your team's time spent on something the system should handle. A self-service portal moves order tracking, artwork uploads, and job updates to the customer — and frees your operations team to focus on production.
If Your Print Operation Is Growing, Your Workflow Has to Grow With It.
Manual processes do not scale — they compound
Every error introduced at intake has to be caught, corrected, and reprocessed downstream. At low volume that overhead is absorbed. At high volume it becomes the bottleneck. Removing manual entry from the intake process does not just reduce errors — it removes the cost of fixing them.
Approval visibility changes how production runs
When your team cannot see where a job is in the approval cycle without checking an email thread, production planning is reactive. When every job's status is visible in one view, work can be sequenced, prioritised, and moved to press without waiting on a confirmation sitting in an inbox.
A self-service portal is an operational decision, not a customer experience one
The business case for customer self-service is not about convenience. It is about where your team's time goes. Every status call that does not happen is time your operations team spends on production rather than support.
The right platform scales with new clients, not against them
Onboarding a new client onto a manual system adds overhead every time. A structured platform absorbs new clients through the same flow — no additional admin, no new spreadsheet, no new inbox thread to manage. Growth becomes a matter of volume, not operational capacity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Stella Brands produces over a million custom-printed K-Cup lids per day, with each order requiring unique artwork, specific lid specifications, and accurate production routing. At that volume, a manual intake process — emails, spreadsheets, phone calls — does not just create inefficiency. It creates compounding risk at every handoff. The challenge was not the complexity of individual orders but the sheer volume of jobs moving through a system with no automated structure behind it.
Most errors in the previous workflow were introduced at intake — when a customer's order was manually transcribed from an email into a spreadsheet before going to production. The web-to-print platform replaced that step entirely. Customers submit orders through a structured flow, with specifications confirmed at the point of entry. Removing manual re-entry removed the primary source of error.
Previously, design approvals moved through email — proofs sent, revisions marked up, confirmations replied to, all tracked manually. Jobs stalled when emails went unread or revisions got lost in threads. The platform replaced this with a structured approval flow where proofs are generated, sent, and approved within the system. Stella's team has full visibility of every job's status. Production no longer waits on a confirmation sitting in an inbox.
For Stella Brands' B2B customers placing repeat custom orders for K-Cup lid packaging. The portal gives them 24/7 access to order status, artwork uploads, job tracking, and real-time updates without contacting Stella's team directly. For Stella's operations team, the effect is fewer inbound enquiries and more time spent on production.
Yes — and that was a specific design requirement. The platform needed to onboard new clients and absorb larger order volumes without adding proportional operational overhead. New clients move through the same structured intake flow. Larger orders run through the same automated approval stages. The platform scales with volume, not against it.
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If Your Print Operation Is Running at Scale, the Workflow Has to Match.
DesignNBuy builds web-to-print platforms for manufacturers where order volume, accuracy, and turnaround time are operational requirements — not marketing claims.
