VAEL: a fashion store built as one product.
Four connected apps for a direct-to-consumer clothing brand: a storefront with category pages and checkout, a customer account, an admin dashboard for the owners and a staff portal for the shop floor, warehouse and dispatch. They share one set of products, orders and stock. This is a concept project with a working prototype, built to show what our Custom Digital Product engagement delivers. Every feature below can be tried in the live demo.
VAEL Berlin, Torstraße 140
M-17-LS-08-41M-19-MFour problems a template store could not solve.
The scenario: a growing Berlin clothing label with a web shop, one store on Torstraße and a small warehouse team, running everything on an off-the-shelf theme and spreadsheets.
Too many returns
Customers guessed their size. Roughly one in three orders came back, eating margin and warehouse time.
Goal: fewer size-related returnsCheckout drop-off
A long, single-page checkout with no local payment methods lost buyers on mobile at the last step.
Goal: higher mobile conversion“Where is my order?”
Customers emailed and phoned for tracking, invoices and returns because they had nowhere to look themselves.
Goal: self-service for customersStaff working on paper
Picking, packing, booking couriers, booking in supplier deliveries and the pickup counter all ran on printouts and phone calls.
Goal: one tool for the whole teamFour apps, one set of data.
Each group of people gets the screens they need. An order placed in the store shows up for the customer, the owners and the warehouse at the same moment.
Storefront
- Home page plus Women, Men and Shoes category pages with subcategories
- Filters for size, colour, price and stock
- Fit Finder that recommends a size and the nearest one in stock
- Bag, wishlist, discount codes and a four-step checkout
Customer account
- Every order with items, delivery method and a live status timeline
- DHL tracking, or a QR pickup code for click & collect
- Invoices to print, buy again, returns and cancellations
- Addresses, payment methods, sizes, notifications and GDPR data export
Admin dashboard
- Revenue, orders, average order and conversion with a 30-day chart
- Orders with bulk status changes, refunds, notes and CSV export
- Products, stock per size, discount codes and review moderation
- Customers by lifetime value, reports, shipping rates, VAT and settings
Staff portal
- Shift clock-in and handover notes
- Pick & pack with shelf locations, express orders first
- Courier runs for DHL, a Berlin bike courier and the store van, with manifests
- Goods receiving by supplier, purchases, returns grading, stock adjustments and the pickup counter
Six deliverables, and where to see them.
Every Custom Digital Product engagement covers the same six areas. Here is how each one shaped VAEL.
Discovery & technical planning
Two workshops with the founders and warehouse lead to agree goals, priorities and what success means in numbers.
- User journeys for first-time buyers, returning customers and staff
- KPI tree: conversion, return rate, average order value
- Architecture and integration map, chosen before design starts
- Phased roadmap with a fixed scope for version 1
Product UX/UI design
A design system built for the brand instead of a theme: editorial type, a calm palette and components reused across store and admin.
Try the storefront ↗- Mobile-first product grid and filters
- Product page that answers fit, stock and delivery before the customer asks
- Four-step checkout with progress, validation and a clear summary
- Customer account built around the question “where is my order?”
- Admin and staff screens designed around daily tasks, not database tables, and usable on a phone on the shop floor
Custom front-end development
Features that templates do not offer, built to be fast and accessible on any device.
Open a product and use “Find my size” ↗- Fit Finder: recommends a size from height, weight and fit preference, and suggests the nearest size in stock
- Instant filtering by size, colour, price and availability
- Real category pages for Women, Men and Shoes with subcategory filters
- Bag, wishlist and discount codes that persist between visits
- Customer account with order timelines, pickup QR codes, invoices and returns
- Staff portal with pick lists by shelf, courier runs, goods receiving and a pickup counter
- Keyboard navigation and screen-reader labels throughout
Agreed APIs & integrations
Every system the shop depends on, connected once and maintained in one place.
See orders and stock in the admin ↗- Payments: Stripe cards and Apple Pay, PayPal, Klarna instalments
- Shipping: DHL labels and live tracking, plus same-day bike courier and own-van runs in Berlin
- Stock that updates from sales, supplier deliveries, returns and adjustments, with sold-out sizes hidden automatically
- Supplier records and purchase history exported for accounting
- Runs on a custom back end or on WooCommerce through its REST API, whichever fits the client
- GA4 e-commerce tracking and newsletter sign-ups
Testing of key user journeys
Automated end-to-end tests run on every release, so a change to one feature cannot silently break checkout.
- Browse, filter, choose a size, add to bag, apply a code, pay, track
- Customer: track an order, download an invoice, start a return
- Admin: change order status, refund, restock
- Staff: release, pick, pack, book a courier, hand over at the counter, book in a delivery
- Form validation and error messages for every checkout field
- Recent iOS and Android phones, Chrome, Safari and Firefox, plus WCAG 2.2 AA checks
Deployment planning & documentation
A launch plan you can follow, and documentation your team actually uses afterwards.
- Separate staging and production environments
- Automatic deployments, daily backups and uptime monitoring
- Security headers and role-based access for owners, shop floor, warehouse and dispatch
- Admin handbook for staff, technical docs for developers
- Handover session and a 30-day support window after launch
One platform, four front doors.
Shoppers, customers, owners and staff use different screens, but all of them read from the same product, order and stock data.
Twelve weeks from first workshop to launch.
Phases overlap so integrations are tested while the interface is still being built.
Custom Digital Product
Fixed after a short discovery call, then paid in milestones: on start, on design approval and on launch.
Plan a project like this ↗- Storefront, customer account, admin dashboard and staff portal
- Discovery and technical planning
- Product UX/UI design
- Custom front-end development
- Agreed APIs and integrations
- Testing of key user journeys
- Deployment planning and documentation
Building something custom?
Describe your product, store or portal. You will get a personal reply within 24 hours and a discovery call to scope it properly.
- Fixed scope before work starts
- Milestone payments
- Working prototype early in the project
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