The products were ready. The admin email would not verify.
Apply had been posting its launch campaign on Instagram while we finished the catalog and store. The account had 45 posts and 187 followers. That was not enormous, but it was real. People were finding us before they could buy anything.
The next step sounded simple. Connect the Shopify store to Instagram so the products could show up where we were already posting them.
It was not simple.
The connection ran through a Facebook Business Manager account, an Instagram account, a commerce catalog, Shopify, and an admin identity. Each part existed. Getting all of them to agree that they belonged together was another matter.
I reopened an old thread with someone at Facebook and explained that our product catalogs were finalized and we were nearing commercial launch. I could reach the screen for adding the Instagram account. I could click the button as many times as I wanted. Nothing happened.
I sent a screenshot and asked for help.
A few days later, the Business Manager page showed something worse. It looked like we had been rejected. I filed an appeal, pulled someone else from our team into the thread, and asked whether we had set up the catalog incorrectly.
We completed another support step. Then another problem appeared.
Business Manager wanted an email attached to my admin account. I entered it and waited for the verification message. Nothing arrived. I did it three times with the same result.
I sent three more screenshots and asked whether support could set the email manually. Then I forwarded the thread internally with a much shorter request: “Can you pair with me on this a little?”
This was the launch work nobody could see. The creative team had made the designs. We had licensed work, commissioned art, built our own collections, and put a real storefront together. The public side of Apply was bright orange and full of stickers. The private side was screenshots of account settings and emails that never arrived.
I still did not know why the connection was failing. The catalog was ready. The Instagram account was active. The button still did nothing.