POP Local

POP Local sells the work of hundreds of small Australian makers, in store and online. The old site, Next.js on top of Square, loaded every product and every category on every category page, so the pages people shop from took up to twenty seconds. Online sales were close to nothing.

Behind the counter it was worse. Every fortnight someone built a sales report for each maker by hand and typed up a bank file for the payments. Makers dropped products at the shop with a name and a price, and the team wrote the descriptions with no idea what was in them.

The shop moved from Square to Shopify in one go: products, customers and the point of sale in store, so in-store and online sales sit in one system and every sale carries the maker who made it. The old catalogue had 1,208 product addresses; each one redirects to its new home, so nothing that ranked was lost.

POP Maker is a web app for both sides of the counter. Makers apply, sign the agreement, then log in to see their own sales pulled live from Shopify, their payout history, and submit new products with the details the shop never had: ingredients, materials, care, allergens, the story. They keep their bank and GST details current themselves.

Staff approve applications (which sets the maker up in Shopify, with a collection of their own on the site), review product submissions with an AI-enhanced description they can edit, and push products into Shopify as drafts. Every fortnight the payout run collects each maker's sales, works out the payout on cost of goods with GST added where the maker is registered, lets staff adjust and confirm, emails every maker their report, and generates the ABA files the bank accepts as a batch payment. What took a day of spreadsheets is a few clicks, with the numbers logged.