Industries We Build For
Commerce engineering for fashion, health and pharmacy, grocery, industrial manufacturing, wholesale distribution and consumer electronics, with the constraints that drive each architecture.
The industry label matters less than four things: how big and how volatile the catalogue is, how complicated pricing gets, what the regulator requires, and how fulfilment actually works. These six patterns cover most of what we are asked to build.
Pattern 01
Fashion and apparel
Thousands of styles, each with a size and colour matrix, all of it turning over every season. The hard problems are merchandising velocity, returns economics and making a 340,000 SKU catalogue feel small on a phone.
What usually needs building
- Variant model that keeps style level browsing fast while stock is tracked per size
- Merchandising rules editable by the buying team without a release
- Returns and exchanges built into the order state machine, not bolted on afterwards
- Drop and pre order flows that survive a traffic spike measured in seconds
Pattern 02
Health, beauty and pharmacy
Regulated product data, restricted categories and an audit trail that has to hold up under inspection. The technology is not the hard part. Proving what was shown to whom, and when, usually is.
What usually needs building
- Product data governance with approval workflow and full change history
- Age, prescription and quantity restrictions enforced server side, not in the interface
- Batch, lot and expiry handling through to the warehouse and back
- Consent, marketing and pharmacovigilance data kept separate and auditable
Pattern 03
Grocery and food
The highest order volume per hour in commerce, the shortest shelf life, and a basket that customers expect to edit until the van leaves. Slot capacity is the real constraint and it has to be honest.
What usually needs building
- Slot booking with capacity held against real picking and delivery resource
- Substitution rules with customer preferences respected and refunds automated
- Weight based pricing and final price adjustment after picking
- Order amendment window that does not corrupt the payment authorisation
Pattern 04
Industrial and manufacturing
B2B commerce where the price a customer sees depends on their contract, their volume, their currency and sometimes the day of the week. The ERP holds the truth and the storefront has to respect that without waiting on it.
What usually needs building
- Contract pricing and customer specific catalogues resolved in under 100 milliseconds
- Account hierarchies with buyer roles, approval limits and cost centres
- Quote to order flows including negotiated lines and expiry rules
- Configurable products with rules validated in the same engine sales uses
Pattern 05
Wholesale and distribution
Large repeat baskets, credit terms, multiple warehouses and a customer base that still sends orders by EDI. The winning feature is almost never a redesign. It is reordering in fewer clicks and stock you can trust.
What usually needs building
- Order templates, fast entry by product code and CSV upload
- Credit limits and payment terms checked live against the ERP
- Multi warehouse allocation with split shipment rules the customer understands
- EDI alongside modern APIs, with the same validation on both paths
Pattern 06
Consumer electronics
Prices that move daily, margins that do not forgive a pricing error, bundles and warranties attached to almost every order, and a marketplace channel that has to stay in step with the direct one.
What usually needs building
- Pricing pipeline with guard rails so a bad feed cannot publish a one euro television
- Bundles, warranties and services priced and fulfilled as part of the same order
- Serial number capture through fulfilment for warranty and returns
- Marketplace listings kept in step with stock and price from a single source
At a glance
What drives the architecture in each pattern
| Pattern | Catalogue | Pricing | Peak profile | Hardest constraint |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fashion and apparel | Very large, seasonal churn | Simple with heavy promotion | Drops and sale events | Returns and merchandising velocity |
| Health and pharmacy | Medium, tightly governed | Simple, some restrictions | Steady with health spikes | Compliance and auditability |
| Grocery and food | Large, high turnover | Weight and promotion driven | Daily cut off peaks | Slot capacity and substitutions |
| Industrial and manufacturing | Very large, configurable | Contract and volume based | Flat, business hours | ERP dependent pricing latency |
| Wholesale and distribution | Large, stable | Customer specific, credit terms | Order deadline peaks | Stock accuracy across warehouses |
| Consumer electronics | Medium, fast moving | Repriced daily, thin margin | Launch and Black Friday | Pricing integrity and channel parity |
Table 10. If your business does not fit any of these cleanly, the discovery phase exists exactly for that. It is two weeks and a fixed fee to find out.
Next step
Tell us what is slowing your commerce platform down
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