Case study · Shop This City
Backend engineers who delivered from day one
We added backend capacity to a three-sided marketplace connecting shoppers, independent stores and wholesale brands.
Reviewed by Usman Nadeem, Founder and CEO
- Client
- Shop This City
- Industry
- Local retail marketplace
- Service
- Custom Software
- Engagement
- Staff Augmentation
Quick answer
What is the Shop This City case study?
We added backend capacity to a three-sided marketplace connecting shoppers, independent stores and wholesale brands.
Shop This City works in Local retail marketplace. Service: Custom Software. Engagement: Staff Augmentation.
The challenge
What they needed
Shoppers, store partners and wholesale brands each needed their own data, access controls and workflows. The team was under time pressure and needed engineers who could contribute without a long onboarding. The team needed the platform to work for all three groups from the start.
The result
What changed
- Production-ready code from day one, inside the existing codebase
- Engineers joined daily stand-ups and the client’s workflow
- More capacity without slowing the internal team
What we built
How we solved it
Multi-tenant accounts
Isolated store and brand data with role-based access.
Scalable APIs
Endpoints serving the storefront and partner dashboards.
Google Cloud operations
Deployment pipelines, databases and environments on GCP.
Marketplace data integrity
Consistent transactions between wholesale listings and store inventory.
The full story
In detail
About Shop This City
Shop This City connects shoppers with independent boutiques and brands in their city, and lets brands distribute their products wholesale to local stores.
Joining an existing team
Our engineers worked inside the existing PHP Laravel codebase, joined daily stand-ups, matched to the internal architecture team and read the documentation, contributing production-ready code from the first day.
Built for three kinds of users
Shoppers, store partners and wholesale brands each have their own data, permissions and workflows, kept separate through multi-tenant design and role-based access, and served by APIs for both the storefront and partner dashboards.
Keeping marketplace data consistent
The team kept transactions consistent between brands’ wholesale listings and stores’ inventory, and managed deployment pipelines, databases and environments on Google Cloud.
Facing something similar?
★★★★★
“MatrixTribe is great to work with - we needed help to deliver quickly. They jumped in, immediately understood the context, read our documentation and quickly got to work delivering high quality code. They were really keen to ensure they were adding value to the team at all times, were very proactive about ensuring this. Could not ask for any thing more, the work was completed, communication was good he even joined our morning stand-ups and provided insight into our more general architecture and approaches.”
Gideon JonesCTO, Shop This City
Technology used
- PHP Laravel
- Google Cloud Platform
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About the Shop This City project
What did Shop This City need?
Shoppers, store partners and wholesale brands each needed their own data, access controls and workflows. The team was under time pressure and needed engineers who could contribute without a long onboarding. The team needed the platform to work for all three groups from the start.
What changed after the work?
The code was production-ready from day one, inside the existing codebase. Our engineers joined daily stand-ups and the client’s workflow. The team gained more capacity without slowing the internal team. They worked inside the client’s own workflow. Engineers could contribute without a long onboarding.
What did MatrixTribe build?
We built the multi-tenant accounts, with isolated store and brand data and role-based access. Scalable APIs serve the storefront and partner dashboards. Google Cloud operations cover the deployment pipelines, databases and environments on GCP. Marketplace data integrity keeps wholesale listings and store inventory consistent in every transaction.