Case study · Custom manufacturing
AI Custom Coin Builder
A web app where customers describe a custom challenge coin in plain words, see it rendered by AI in a minute or two, and send it straight to sales as a ready-to-quote lead.
Highlights
- Plain-English design: no design skills or options menus needed
- Every render proofread by a second AI before the customer sees it
- Back of the coin drawn to match the front: same shape, metal and rim
- Quote requests land in Zoho CRM as leads, shared out to sales reps in turn
- Built-in spend limits so the AI bill can never run away
The challenge
Coins For Anything makes custom challenge coins for military units, fire departments, companies and clubs. Most customers arrive with a logo and a rough idea, but no way to picture the finished coin. That meant a lot of back-and-forth with designers before anyone could even get a quote, and plenty of visitors who left before reaching that point.
They wanted customers to see their coin right away, without learning a design tool, and to arrive at sales ready to order.
What we built
A three-step web app: design the front, design the back, submit for quote.
- Add a logo the easy way. Customers upload a file, or paste their website address and the app finds the logo on the page for them.
- Describe it in plain words. “Our logo in the middle, ‘FIRE DEPT’ curved around the top, navy blue behind it.” Style notes and a round or custom shape round it out.
- See it in a minute or two. The AI renders a realistic struck-metal coin, using real factory coin photos as a reference for the finish.
- A back that matches. The back is rendered using the finished front as its guide, so it comes out as the same coin turned over.
- Straight to a quote. Quantity, size, contact and shipping details are sent with the design. Each request becomes a lead in Zoho CRM with the render attached, shared out to the sales reps in turn, and a confirmation email goes to the customer. Online payment via Stripe is ready to switch on.
Making AI spell things right
Image AI is great at metal and bad at spelling, and a coin with a typo is worthless. So the app never trusts a render on its own.
Anything a customer types in double quotes is treated as exact lettering. After each render, a second AI reads the coin back letter by letter, twice, without being told what it should say. If the wording doesn’t match, the coin is re-drawn with a note on what to fix. Customers then see either “Wording checked” or exactly what the AI wrote, plus a one-click Contact Us to Fix My Design button that sends the design to a human artist.
Keeping costs under control
Every AI render costs money, whether or not the visitor orders. The app has limits built in from day one:
- Per-visitor hourly and daily caps, and one render at a time.
- A site-wide daily budget, with an email to the team at 80% and 100%.
- Repeat requests for the same design are served free from the earlier render.
- Bot protection, so scripts can’t burn through the budget.
- Clean, full-quality artwork stays on the server. Visitors only see a lightly watermarked preview.
Built for phones
Plenty of customers start on their phone, so the mobile layout walks them through one step at a time, with a ”?” beside each field explaining what to write. The Coin Nerd, the company’s mascot, sits in the corner as a guide. It can walk customers through the form or put them in touch with a designer.
