# From Zero to One: How I Built a Multi-Market B2B Badge & Trophy Site with an AI Agent Configurator

> Source: <https://dev.to/kd_jiang_cb6ed42090a6f3f5/from-zero-to-one-how-i-built-a-multi-market-b2b-badge-trophy-site-with-an-ai-agent-configurator-d0m>
> Published: 2026-09-20 05:22:13+00:00

## 
  
  
  The Niche: Badges, Medals, Coins, and Trophies

Most e-commerce builders chase apparel and gadgets. I went the other way: **B2B medals, award plaques, commemorative coins, and event badges** — products sold to event organizers, schools, sports federations, and corporate HR teams across dozens of countries.

Three things make this niche unusually good for a solo founder:

1. 
**Factory-partnership model.** I don't hold inventory. A partner factory produces against specs, so my cost structure is nearly all margin and zero warehouse risk.
2. 
**Long-tail demand.** Every event generates searches: "Olympiad medals custom", "anniversary coin manufacturer", "World Cup badge design". Thousands of micro-keywords, low competition.
3. 
**Cross-event spikes.** A single global tournament can double inquiry volume for a quarter. (The 2026 World Cup is already showing exactly that.)

## 
  
  
  The Stack: $0/month Hosting

The site (I call it **MedalCraft**) runs on:

- 
**Next.js static export** → deployed on**Cloudflare Pages free tier** (unlimited bandwidth, no credit card, custom domain for free via`.pages` or your own DNS)
- 
**Programmatic product pages** — one URL per product variant (material × size × event type), generated at build time
- 
**Stripe-compatible checkout flow** for Western customers;**Airwallex / LianLian** receiving for the China-side supplier payouts (0.3–1% fees, no annual cost, Alipay-friendly)

Total infrastructure cost: a domain. Everything else is free.

## 
  
  
  The Core Feature: an AI Agent as Product Configurator

Here's the part most B2B sites still do manually: a customer emails, sales replies with PDFs, three weeks of back-and-forth.

MedalCraft ships a **conversational AI configurator** instead:

Implementation notes that actually matter:

- 
**Structured output first.** The agent emits a JSON spec (dimensions, plating, engraving areas, packaging) that maps 1:1 to the factory's order sheet. No free-text handoffs.
- 
**A "scene lock" for images.** The mockup generator uses fixed virtual studio scenes (lighting, camera angle, background) with only the product rendered in-variant, so every customer sees consistent imagery — cheaper and more trustworthy than per-order photography.
- 
**Guardrails on pricing.** The agent quotes*ranges* computed from a public cost table, never exact costs, and always routes to a human before a contract.

## 
  
  
  SEO + GEO: Engineering for LLM Answers, Not Just Google

Standard SEO got you indexed pages; **Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)** gets you *cited inside AI answers*. For a B2B product niche, that's now the real channel — buyers increasingly ask ChatGPT/Claude "best custom medal manufacturer in China".

What moved the needle:

1. 
**Entity-rich product pages** : each variant page states manufacturer name, factory location, MOQ, certifications, and lead times as explicit key-value blocks — exactly what LLMs extract.
2. 
**Schema.org `Product` + `Organization` + `FAQPage`** on every template.
3. 
**Comparison content** : "Custom medals vs. purchasing pre-made kits: a cost breakdown" style posts that LLMs love to quote.
4. 
**Backlinks without ad spend** : guest posts on dev/design communities, free product calculators that schools link to, and directory listings (trade show directories, award-industry directories) — slow, compounding, free.

## 
  
  
  What I'd Tell You to Do Differently

- Don't build the AI configurator on day one. Validate with 20 manual inquiries first — you'll learn the real decision criteria (ribbon color, delivery date beats design novelty).
- The factory partnership is the moat, not the website. Negotiate a spec-sheet template with them early.
- Payments killed more of my time than code. For CN-based suppliers serving EU/US customers, a dedicated cross-border account (Airwallex/LianLian-class) beats Stripe Payouts on both fee and speed.

## 
  
  
  Where to Look Next

The full technical documentation for the MedalCraft stack (site architecture, agent prompt design, Cloudflare deploy scripts, payment routing) is written up in detail online.

*What would you add to a B2B product configurator? I'm curious which industries still manually quote everything.*