Small Business App Rescue

As the entrepreneur's inventory reached thousands of items, she could no longer manually list them on marketplaces and needed automation tools. Facing budget limitations, she turned to freelance software developers.

The hired team built an app to automate posting her items on the Poshmark marketplace. Next, the customer commissioned a similar tool for Grailed. However, her developers exited the project, leaving it at a stage where, according to them, the app was 99% ready.

When the entrepreneur tried to find vendors to launch the app, she unexpectedly faced significant challenges. Everyone she spoke to claimed that the app was created with an unsuitable tech stack and needed to be completely rewritten.

The customer, having spent almost all her budget and half a year, couldn't accept this. She came to Cyfrania asking to get the current app running as it is, regardless of its possible limitations.

Expected existing app's functionality were as follows:

• Converting European clothing sizes provided by suppliers to US sizes and align them with the size chart used on the Grailed marketplace.
• Automatically posting the customer's goods to the customer's store on the Grailed marketplace.

We found out that the app is built on Google Apps Script, and it converts the customer's inventory details using a series of Google Sheets. Since this technology isn't designed to handle such a large amount of data, it took the app about 10 minutes to process the entire inventory. Apparently, this is what prevented its integration with the marketplace.

We've informed the customer that the current version of the app will face significant slowness, inconvenience, and limitations regarding upgrades. Also, it's likely to encounter ongoing technical issues. She confirmed her readiness to deal with these drawbacks and her aspiration to revive the current app to produce income and gather resources for its advancement.

We assigned one developer to this project, who spent two weeks completing the following tasks:

• Fixing the issues that hinder the integration of the app with the marketplace and getting it up and running.
• Building an admin panel for the customer's convenience, where they can identify items that weren't posted on Grailed due to wrong designer name format and set the required spelling for subsequent automatic conversion.
• Integration of the ability to set discounts.

This allowed the customer to start selling items on Grailed and earning extra income. However, she faced the impossibility of resolving certain functional issues due to technical constraints, as well as frequent malfunctions.

Our team proactively developed and presented a project for the modernization of this app, involving a transition to a full-featured database and relevant technologies. After ensuring that this project won't require significant investments, the customer agreed.

The sole developer completed this modernization project in one week, which included:

• Full replication of all app functionality using a robust PostgreSQL database and efficient Node.js and Nest.js tools.
• Launching the upgraded app, testing it in real-world conditions, and addressing all minor glitches.

The customer was highly satisfied with the results and plans to upgrade her app for working with Poshmark in a similar manner. Then, she intends to begin exploring new marketplaces.

The customer gained multiple crucial advantages from this rescue and modernization project:

1. Successful recovery of an app facing serious tech issues: Our team managed to find a way to launch the preexisted low quality app so it could have a chance to break even and generate revenue.
2. Highly affordable modernization: Our developer recreated the entire functionality using proper tech in a week, whereas the previous version required the customer to pay for six months of work by two freelancers.
3. Dependable and effective solution: The customer now possesses a robust and convenient tool to integrate her inventory into the marketplace, unlike the incredibly slow and failing app she had before.