How I Automated My Bike Shop

Web Scraping With Nokogiri and Mechanize

Ever since I can remember I have loved mountain biking. From doing Ride the Rockies with my family at the age of 8 to riding gnarly, technical downhill trails up at Whistler Bike Park, in British Columbia, Canada, I have spent a huge chunk of my life cruising on two wheels.

Near the end of last year I decided to switch from a pure consumer of bike parts to being a retailer in the industry. In a couple of weeks, I tackled all the necessary prerequisites for a wholesale account and my dream of being a retailer was a reality.

For the first couple of months sales were going well with the majority of them being online. Unfortunately like most small business, I hit my first pain point. Instead of spending my time concentrating on building my brand and advertising, I was bogged down with the menial task of updating the stock of every item in my...