eCommerce System for Partner Distribution and Retail

4 Jan 2021

The Client

Leading Timing System Manufacturer based out of Europe

The Need

The client is a leading timing equipment manufacturer based out of Spain having distribution channels of their equipment across 15+ countries and several event managers across the globe who procure the equipment for each race including renting certain hardware components.

The client required an e-commerce portal for their distributors to be able to place order in bulk for several of their retailers and for each of the distributor would have a retail marketplace allowing their customers to place orders, make payments, rent and return equipment.

The Challenge

The client wanted had 15 primary distributors and each of them had a localized marketplace requirements in terms of the languages to be setup and hence localized marketplace was needed for each distributed. Additionally, each of the distributor had different payment gateways and shipping partners.

The client had requested for several customizations including the marketplace be allowed only for authorized channel partners/ distributors and retailers. The marketplace had several customizations in the order process and customizations involved with the ordering.

The client needed the below customizations: 1.Language localization 2.Closed marketplace 3.Custom payment gateways and shipping partners for each localized partner 4.Credit based payments 5.Rental of hardware equipment 6.Custom specification requirement definition option to customize orders for events 7.Each localized instance would be running independent of each other for each of the distribution partner.

The Solution

Star Knowledge proposed to build a Magento based e-commerce marketplace for the distribution partners and localized stores for each of the localized regions to allow retailers to allow custom orders. The customizations were planned with the development of custom modules and not changes to the core engine to ensure maintainability.

The local marketplace had a customized partner branding and rental module that allowed retailers to rent equipment and return including customized shipping module integrations for tracking. The checkout process for the retail marketplace had been customized to allow custom specification definition, option to choose delivery options and delivery dates to allow shipping, options to expedite orders. The system had the conventional e-commerce feature including discount and coupon management as well.

Additionally, the solution was configured to support credit-based billing with custom integration with Intuit QuickBooks for book-keeping. The solution was further hosted on a DevOps environment allows multi-environment management leading to simplified upgrade, maintenance and monitoring cycles.

Benefits obtained

• Localized stores with custom shipping and payment integrations
• Custom rental module and tracking
• Several 3rd party api integrations including QuickBooks
• Simplified maintenance and DevOps management
• Credit based checkout to allow distributors to make credit-based payment

Technology Stack

• Magento 2.1
• MySQL
• PHP 7
• GitLab
• Docker
• PHP Extensions
• 3rd Party payment gateway
• Quick books integration
• Jenkins