Custom softwareConcept
Relay Operations platform
Custom operations software for a direct-to-consumer brand — orders, fulfilment and stock in one place, with a role for everyone who touches them.
Inside the work
The order pipeline.
The orders table with its status filters, one order open in the side drawer, and the stock counts behind it.
Overview
Relay is a concept for a fictional homeware brand that sells direct to consumers and has outgrown its spreadsheets. Orders arrive from the online store, stock lives in two places, and three teams answer the same questions in three different tools. The brief: one internal platform the whole company works from.
The brief
- Problem
- Orders, stock and support live in separate tools, joined by copy and paste.
- Constraint
- It must work with the existing storefront, carrier and accounting tools — no migration weekend.
- Answer
- One internal platform on top of those tools: an order pipeline, live stock, roles and a dashboard.
Brands at this stage run on a patchwork: the storefront's admin for orders, a spreadsheet for stock, a shared inbox for returns and a chat thread for everything in between. Every handover is a copy and paste, and every copy and paste is a chance to ship the wrong thing.
Relay puts the whole order lifecycle on one screen. Orders arrive from the storefront through an integration, move through clear statuses — new, packing, shipped, delivered — and carry their own history. Stock is counted per location and reserved the moment an order is paid, so the number on screen is the number on the shelf.
Roles decide who sees what. Support can refund but not change stock; the warehouse can pack and print labels but does not see revenue; the founders get the dashboard. Every action is logged with a name and a time, so questions are answered by the record, not by memory.
About this concept
This is a concept build for a fictional client. It shows the process and the standard we bring to client engagements.
Approach
Model the business, then draw the screens.
Data model first
Orders, items, locations and people are modelled before a single screen is drawn. When the model is right, most screens are clear tables and short forms.
One status, one owner
Every order has exactly one status and one team responsible for moving it on. Whoever opens it sees the next action first.
Integrate, don't replace
The storefront, payments, carrier and accounting keep doing what they do well. Relay syncs with them through their APIs and becomes the place the work happens.
What it ships with
Built for the people who run it.
Figures refer to the concept brief.
Modules
5modules
Orders, fulfilment, inventory, customers and analytics — one navigation, one search, one set of permissions.
Roles
Four roles, one permission model
Owner, operations, warehouse and support, each with exactly the actions the job needs. Every change is logged.
Integrations
4integrations
Storefront orders, payments, carrier labels and an accounting export, each with its own sync status and error log.
States
Designed for the busy day
Empty, loading, out-of-sync and error states for every table, so a slow API never looks like a lost order.
Stack
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- PostgreSQL
- Prisma
- Role-based access
- Webhooks
- Vercel
Try it yourself
A working build, not a picture.
Open the demo and use it the way a guest or a client would. Every tap and tab works.