Sneakit
Europe´s premier Sneaker Marketplace
Outline
Challenges
Need
Sneakers have long since ceased to be just shoes: an expression of individuality and subculture, a status symbol, and a collector's item. It is, therefore, not surprising that entire communities soon developed around the coveted kicks, in which sneaker aficionados swap, buy, sell and value their best pieces. While there are already platforms for the simple buying and selling of sought-after sneakers in America, there was a big gap in Europe, which the founders of Sneakit wanted to fill quickly. In addition to the requirement that the marketplace is built as soon as possible, there were many other benchmarks to meet. The selling and buying process should be as uncomplicated and, simultaneously, as secure as possible because the site’s trustworthiness is a top priority. During the payment process, sellers should also have the option for the offered sneakers to be paid out in cryptocurrency. In the course of the project, a compelling requirement was added: we were to design the internal organization management system and warehouse system. This means that we were allowed to work with hardware. Exciting!
Flow
Design
A good marketplace needs a good design. Especially in such a visual subject area as sneakers, a suitable environment that puts the shoe in the foreground is vital.
That's why the design comes from a graphic designer we've worked great with and trust completely, especially for a youthful project like Sneakit: Lara Langner.
Lara kept Sneakit's visuals to a minimum, with muted pastel colors and a clean build elevating the shoes to center stage. But pictures are worth a thousand words:
Minimalistic Design
It was very nice to have the opportunity to design something so reduced and clean, especially for a sales platform.
Lara Langner
Marketplace
A marketplace simply works, or it doesn't work at all. There’s nothing in between. Therefore, we have equipped Sneakit with sophisticated features so that users and sellers love the platform.
Organization
While we were in the process of developing software for the e-commerce platform, our customer approached us with an interesting requirement: please build us a warehouse organization system. Besides the software, this also included the configuration of the hardware.
Here, we tried to relieve warehouse employees of as much manual work as possible. To do this, we equipped both incoming packages and all shelves in the warehouse with QR codes, which were to be the main point of interaction with the logistics software.
Warehouse workers can register on the platform and then communicate with logistics in the following system:
- scan package with sneaker
- scan desired shelf
- all required interfaces are automatically accessed in the background
Depending on the scanned object, different behavioral mechanisms have been implemented. These include the automatic creation of send orders, printing of shipping labels, and automatic notification of buyers.We have been tinkering with this system for some time and are extremely happy with the final product and its ease of use. Initially, the idea was to equip all sneakers and warehouse shelves with barcodes, which would then be scanned using our barcode scanners. However, we finally decided to use QR codes so that every warehouse worker can easily do the logistics interactions from their smartphone and does not need a barcode scanner.
Tech stack
Vue.js
Laravel
Tailwind
AWS
Forge
Meilisearch
Sentry
Connecting the dots
Fast, safe, and sleek. The Sneakit marketplace combines all the features its products stand for. The beta was launched quickly, while quickly changing requirements were easily implemented through agile teamwork and well-thought-out software architecture. On top, we kept doing quality sprints throughout the process to maintain and improve quality through code refactoring. As a result, the platform has become Europe's premier sneaker marketplace, with hundreds of sneakers changing hands daily and no end to the growth. The reduced design, which really only puts the shoe in the foreground, and the perfect usability round off a great success.
The Team
Achievements
1.000.000+
page views
∞
great moments working together