Reopening a thirty-year studio
After a decade in beverage-alcohol ecommerce operations, we're taking on client work again — with a specific thesis about what modern tooling has made possible.
MCWD Labs was founded in 1995, shipped hundreds of projects through the 2000s, and then — around 2013 — mostly stopped taking new client work. The studio’s principal moved into ecommerce leadership at a large independent beverage-alcohol retailer in Boston, and then into a decade of consulting and operating work in that category. The studio became a specialist vehicle for one vertical rather than a general-purpose digital practice.
We’re reopening for broader client work now, and the reason is specific. Modern development tools — AI-assisted coding environments in particular — have changed what a small senior studio can deliver. The change is recent enough that we wanted to see it firsthand before making any claims about it. So we spent the last year building our own software on the new tooling, in production, under real load, for real customers.
The result is PriceGun.io — a competitive pricing intelligence platform for independent beverage-alcohol retailers. It monitors 350+ retailer feeds on Wine-Searcher, tracks all 293 Total Wine locations in the United States, processes millions of listings daily, and delivers ranked per-SKU pricing recommendations to subscribing retailers. It runs on AWS Lightsail. It was built by a team of one.
A decade ago, that build would have required a team of five engineers, a year of runway, and several hundred thousand dollars. It took a fraction of all three. Not because the work got easier — it didn’t — but because modern tooling handles the parts of software development that used to consume most of a team’s attention. The interesting work is still the interesting work. Everything around it has compressed.
That’s the thesis. Custom software, ecommerce, and substantial web builds are meaningfully more feasible than they were two years ago for operators who work with a small senior team that uses modern tools well. We built PriceGun to prove it to ourselves. We’re reopening to find out what else is currently possible.
A few things we’re not saying. We’re not saying AI tools replace engineering craft — they don’t, and the shops claiming they do are shipping inferior work. We’re not saying every project is now cheap — some still aren’t, and we’ll tell you when they’re not. We’re not saying everyone should build custom software — most companies shouldn’t. Shopify is the right answer for most ecommerce operators, WordPress is the right answer for most marketing sites, and off-the-shelf tools are the right answer for most software needs.
What we’re saying is narrower. For the projects that genuinely call for custom work — where the business logic is specific, where the operational fit matters, where the off-the-shelf options don’t reach — the economics have shifted. A small senior team with modern tools can ship work that used to require a much larger operation. If you’ve been sitting on a project because it felt too ambitious two years ago, it’s worth getting a second opinion.
We’re taking on websites, ecommerce builds, custom software, consulting, and data infrastructure work. Based in Hartford, Connecticut. Working with clients across New England and beyond. If any of that fits what you’re trying to build, start a conversation.