Zaars
A reseller marketplace for South Asian attire.
About Zaars
Zaars is a marketplace for buying and selling new and used South Asian clothing. Think Mercari, Depop, or Poshmark, with a focus on empowering local retailers that do not have an online presence.
The problem
After finishing as a finalist in the University of Chicago New Venture Challenge and securing an investment, Zaars was looking to take their platform from idea to reality.
The Zaars team evaluated a number of options for developing a proof of concept including self-building with Bubble, and hiring an offshore developer to build a WooCommerce prototype, but each option proved to have limitations in feature capability and scale that left the team seeking other options.
Our role
Shine Studio was engaged to build a minimum viable product (MVP).
We kicked off by working with the Zaars team to develop a feature set that addressed core buyer and seller needs while staying within budget limitations.
Then, taking learnings from Zaars' customer discovery, we designed and built a robust marketplace experience for users with a modern, scalable tech stack.
Core features
Payments system
Zaars marketplace is integrated with Stripe, a complete payments platform, engineered for growth.
We implemented Stripe Checkout to handle secure checkout flow, and Stripe Connect to enable sellers to join the platform and link to their bank accounts for direct payments.
The Zaars team has visibility over all payment and connect account activity via the Stripe dashboard.
Photos
Checkout
Stripe Dashboard
Marketplace
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Search
Listing page
Search
Offers
When creating a new listing, Zaars sellers have the ability to indicate if they are willing to take offers on purchase price.
For those items, Buyers have the able to submit an offer for the price they would be willing to pay.
Once submitted, the seller is notified via email and can either accept or reject the request. If accepted, the user will receive an email notification and the item will be added to the user's cart.
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Resource Categories
Tailoring
Fit is extremely important for South Asian clothing, which is why measurement transparancy is one of Zaars' core values.
It starts with Zaars fit, which is a comprehensive list of measurements found on every item on the site.
Many Zaars sellers are local businesses, and it is very common for them to tailor items purchased in their physical shops to buyer's specific sizes. We wanted to replicate this on Zaars, so we gave sellers the ability to indicate whether or not an item can be tailored.
If an item can be tailored, buyers will be prompted to confirm if the listed sizing meets their need before adding to their cart. If not, buyers are given the option to request specific tailoring alterations.
Once a tailoring request is submitted, sellers are notified by email and can accept or reject the request. If approved, buyers receive an email notification and the item is added to the buyer's cart.
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Zaars fit
Tailoring request
Chat
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Ask a question
Chat dashboard