For nearly 25 years, CelebrityOwned has built a reputation as a trusted destination for luxury apparel and accessories. Founded by Dana Weinrot, the business has evolved into a tightly run resale operation with a unique footprint across Shopify and eBay. What began as a small, hands-on venture has grown into a multi-platform ecosystem – and with that growth came new operational challenges.
To maintain accuracy, efficiency and a high-quality customer experience, the team behind CelebrityOwned turned to automation. Their goal wasn’t just to streamline repetitive tasks; it was to create a smarter, more scalable workflow across channels. And that’s where we came in.
A Business Built on Detail and Dependent on Accuracy
CelebrityOwned uses Shopify as its central inventory system, pushing its meticulously curated product catalog into their eBay store. While this setup gives them flexibility and reach, it also created operational friction that required precise, rule-based updates between systems.
“Because our business is so tightly integrated with eBay, we needed a way to ensure product data stayed consistent and categorized correctly,” explains David Weinrot, Dana’s husband and Operations & Product Advisor. “Shopify is our system of record. What happens there needs to automatically – and accurately – flow into eBay.”
This mattered most for brand categorization. eBay requires numerical identifiers for brand categories. Shopify, meanwhile, uses the brand name.
“If a product is labeled as Christian Dior in Shopify, to properly categorize it in our eBay store, we need to update it with a 7 digit numerical value that represents the brand” explains David.
The team was looking for a way to translate one into the other without manual intervention. Manually mapping every brand name to a numeric field wasn’t just tedious. It introduced margin for error, created workflow bottlenecks and slowed down listing times. With so many products to manage, the team needed a smarter, automated solution.
Finding the Right Automation Solution
The team discovered Arigato directly through the Shopify App Store. They were looking for a tool powerful enough to:
- Read product attributes in Shopify
- Transform those attributes into structured data
- Update a Bonify Custom Field with the correct eBay category code
- Ensure the information consistently synced back into their eBay listings
They needed a workflow tool that wasn’t just flexible, but intelligent.
“Arigato had the depth we needed,” David explains. “It wasn’t just simple triggers and actions. It gave us the logic, customization and flexibility to build workflows that matched the complexity of our business.”
Solving Complex Categorization at Scale
One of the first automations they built is now the backbone of their eBay operations.
Using Arigato, the team created a workflow that:
- Detects the brand of a product in Shopify
- Matches that brand to the corresponding 7-digit numerical value required by their eBay store
- Updates the Bonify Custom Field with that value
- Ensures that field syncs seamlessly into eBay for accurate categorization
This single automation removed hours of manual work each week and drastically reduced categorization errors – something critical in a niche industry where buyers expect precise, reliable listings.
“It’s a deceptively simple workflow,” David shared, “but it eliminates a huge amount of manual overhead. It’s absolutely essential to how we manage our listings now.”
Automating Rich Product Descriptions with OpenAI + Arigato
Categorization was only one part of the puzzle. CelebrityOwned also wanted to level up their product copy, turning structured product attributes into marketing-ready descriptions and image alt text.
The challenge? Writing high-quality descriptions for luxury consignment items is time-consuming. Every detail matters and every product is unique.
Leveraging their OpenAI API key, the team built an Arigato workflow that takes all the product attributes entered into Shopify (brand, material, condition, measurements, style and more) and turns them into:
- Rich, compelling product descriptions
- Clean, SEO-friendly image alt text
“All we had to do was enter the core product information,” David said, “and Arigato handled the rest. The output is impressive.”
The workflow not only improved consistency but significantly accelerated product creation, allowing them to list inventory faster while still maintaining high editorial quality.
A Support Team That Goes Beyond Expected
When asked about their experience using Arigato, the founder didn’t hesitate:
“Support at all levels of the organization has been incredible. They’ve helped me whenever I get stuck on my setup. Super responsive.”
For a business operating across multiple platforms with custom logic and API integrations, the human support behind Arigato became a defining part of the partnership.
“It’s not just the tool – it’s the folk behind it. That made a huge difference.”
John Carbone, Bonify’s founder, had the following to say about the project.
“I love it when I get a chance to meet directly with merchants and understand their mission and their real pain points. From there, I enjoy providing useful ideas and guidance that really move them forward in a meaningful way, rather than just one off solutions to technical challenges. Starting with the actual pain point then creatively working through it brings us to holistic solutions that would not have come up if we just focused on the technical side.”
To book a meeting with John and discuss your own use case, click here.
Looking Ahead
What started as a need to unify Shopify and eBay has grown into a broader automation strategy. CelebrityOwned now uses Arigato not just to maintain accuracy, but to scale smarter, faster and with more confidence.
From complex categorization to AI-powered descriptions, Arigato has become a cornerstone of their daily operations – a quiet force powering a thriving, independent luxury resale business.