The challenge
The client's problem wasn't software, it was distance. Their entire value proposition — local stock, local delivery, local prices — evaporates if merchants have to manage the relationship over email and spreadsheets. The app had to make a South African supplier feel as frictionless inside Shopify as an overseas marketplace, while respecting constraints that don't apply to those marketplaces:
- The payment model couldn't be automated away. South African merchants at this stage typically can't pre-fund inventory or hold a supplier balance. The workflow had to let the customer's payment arrive first, then route the merchant's supplier payment through a local gateway — which means order sync and order payment are deliberately decoupled, and the app has to hold orders in a clear intermediate state rather than firing fulfilment on receipt.