A different customer entirely
The white-label platform served Deknudt's retail partners. Print & Frame serves the shopper directly: upload your own picture, choose a frame, see the finished product before buying, and have it delivered to your door without leaving the house.
It arrived during the pandemic, when e-commerce stopped being a growth project and became the business. Deknudt Frames is, on their own account, the only business in their market with this capability.
One machine, five languages
The whole thing runs on IBM i and Power Systems, and it is a fair illustration of what that platform will actually carry:
- RPG and SQL — the backend business logic
- WordPress and PHP — the front end
- Python — image processing
- Ghostscript — printing
- Node.js — integration with external web services
All of it running side by side with the company's original source code on the same box. That is the point worth taking away: nobody had to choose between the code that runs the business and the languages a modern storefront wants.
What it changed
Print & Frame let Deknudt reach a larger market during the pandemic and evolve from a purely B2B manufacturer into a B2C one. Order processing got faster, payment processing improved measurably and inventory tracking became more accurate.
The solution has since been integrated with larger marketplaces including Amazon and Bol, which extends the audience again without extending the number of systems that hold the truth about stock.
Why we show it next to the other Deknudt case
Same client, same platform, opposite end of the market. The first project made 8,000 products visible through other people's shops; this one made a single personal photograph into a manufacturable order. Both work because the rules never left the IBM i.
Source: cdinvest.eu portfolio, Print & Frame.