Ecommerce Marketplace Development

The Problem

A marketplace operator running multiple vendors through a single WooCommerce storefront had outgrown their off-the-shelf setup. Vendor payouts were handled manually in spreadsheets, product approval workflows lived in email threads, and the checkout flow didn't reflect the complexity of multi-vendor orders — split shipping, vendor-specific pricing rules, and bulk buyer RFQs all required custom logic that didn't exist.

What I Built

Built a heavily customized WooCommerce platform with a vendor management layer, a custom checkout flow that partitioned carts by vendor, a QR-based product lookup and fulfillment tool, and integrations connecting the storefront to external inventory and reporting systems. Vendor onboarding became a structured workflow rather than a back-and-forth email process, and buyers could complete bulk RFQs without leaving the storefront.

Technical Challenge

WooCommerce's cart model assumes a single seller. Extending it to support vendor-partitioned orders — each with independent shipping rules, commission calculations, and fulfillment states — without breaking existing extensions required building a custom order partitioning layer on top of WooCommerce's hooks system. Replacing core checkout code would have broken with every plugin update, so the architecture had to intercept and transform order data at specific hook points rather than rewrite the flow.

What Was Delivered

• Multi-vendor marketplace architecture on WooCommerce
• Vendor onboarding and product approval workflows
• Custom checkout with per-vendor order partitioning
• RFQ (request for quote) system for bulk buyers
• QR-based product lookup and fulfillment tooling
• Commission calculation and payout automation
• Integration with external inventory and reporting systems

Outcome

Vendor onboarding that previously required back-and-forth coordination became a self-service workflow. The operations team moved from manual spreadsheet reconciliation to automated nightly payout reports. Bulk buyers gained a structured quoting process instead of emailing for pricing.

Live Site

Technologies