Overview

Small wholesale businesses like bakeries often struggle with order management. Many rely on phone orders and Excel spreadsheets because existing software solutions are expensive and complex.

On January 14, 2025, I started developing Simple Order to address this gap with an affordable, user-friendly order management website.

How it works

• The wholesaler signs up for a free trial without entering any credit card details
• They can start adding their inventory immediately
• After confirming their email, they can invite their customers
  • This sends an email to the customer, inviting them to create an account if they don't have one already
  • The customers don't have to pay to use the site - only merchants have to have an active subscription or trial
• Customers can then place an order on the site instead of phoning the merchant directly
• The merchant can see all their orders, print them out, and mark them as fulfilled
• The wholesaler needs to start a subscription before the trial ends to keep using the site

simpleorder.co.uk/inventory

Inspiration

Two years ago, my mum bought a village shop, and from talking to her, I have a lot of insider insight into the frustrations of order management websites, as she uses quite a few to stock her shelves.

I've tried them all out, and even the ones from household brands aren't too great. Most have a less-than-ideal UX, and my mum doesn’t like using any of them.

I was also surprised to learn that most of her smaller suppliers only take customer orders over the phone.

However, having investigated the market offerings, this makes a lot of sense, as many of the market offerings cost up to £150 per month - far too much for a small supplier who can just about manage using phone orders and an Excel spreadsheet.

I've been reading business books voraciously in the past year and found Blue Ocean Strategy particularly inspiring.

It encourages entrepreneurs to create uncontested markets with fresh demand (blue oceans) rather than competing fiercely over a limited pool of existing customers (red oceans).

I'm trying to create a blue ocean by tailoring my web app towards people who aren't currently using any order management software at all.

Features

• Friction-free trials
  • Of the 20+ order management websites I've tried, I couldn't find one that enabled you to start immediately, so this is a key market advantage.
• Allows users to be merchants, customers, or both with the same credentials
  • This is essential from a UX perspective, as having multiple accounts for the same site is frustrating.
  • Many well-known platforms, including Upwork, lack this capability because such fundamental identity architecture decisions are extremely difficult to refactor once a system is built. Implementing this from the beginning avoids major technical debt that would be prohibitively complex to fix later on.
  • It's also essential from a business point of view, as every site user could become a subscription-paying merchant.
• Priced for small businesses
  • Existing solutions cost up to £150 per month, which is far too high for many micro-enterprises. I believe I can charge only £19.50 per month and still have a significant profit margin.

Avoided features

As part of the Blue Ocean mindset, I have deliberately omitted features that add complexity without adding value.

• No order payment processing
  • Merchants prefer direct bank transfer payments to avoid payment processing fees.
• No delivery management
  • I'm targeting businesses that sell physical products and handle their own deliveries.
• No order confirmation emails
  • It's straightforward for a website to confirm that an order has been saved in the database without sending an email, which is notoriously unreliable and frustrating for users if it doesn't arrive promptly.

Tech stack

• Next.js (the full-stack framework built on top of React) deployed with Vercel
  • Static generation for the SEO-critical landing page and blog
  • Snappy single-page application feel for the application part of the site
  • Fully end-to-end type-safe API using a system I've developed myself

By optimising images and using dynamic imports, I have achieved perfect Lighthouse scores on the landing page and blog articles

• Styling with Tailwind CSS
• PostgreSQL database deployed with Neon
• Type-safe database queries with Drizzle
• Transactional emails with Mailgun

• Subscription payment handling with the Stripe API

checkout.stripe.com/c/pay

Starting point

I started designing the landing page for the front end using the Building a Story Brand marketing roadmap

For the rest of the site, I just stuck to the design principles I learned from Refactoring UI, a wonderful £80 digital design book that was worth every penny.

As the brand is about simplicity, I've chosen a minimal interface with a blue accent- you can't go wrong with blue.

I've also set up a BIMI logo (Brand Indicators for Message Identification), which can significantly increase email open rates. However, this is only displayed in Yahoo and Fastmail, as other email applications require a Verified Mark Certificate, which costs over £1,000 per year.

Research has shown that a BIMI logo can increase open rates by an average of 39%.

Challenges

Designing the database schema has been the biggest challenge so far.

I used to be a big fan of MongoDB, which I'll admit was primarily because of the nice interface for their Mac app. But after finding it impossible to design a sensible MongoDB schema for this project, I did what I always do - reached for a book!

I hadn't appreciated the beauty of relational databases before, as I didn't understand their significance, but having read Designing Data-Intensive Applications, I'm now all too aware of the downsides of non-relational databases like MongoDB.

I've also learned to use Drizzle, an SQL query builder, which makes it easy to write complex database queries and joins in a fully type-safe way, making it much harder to make mistakes.

Plus, Drizzle's syntax is so intuitive; it's probably the technology I've memorised the fastest.

Progress

I've made significant progress on the site, though it's still far from being ready to launch.

I have deployed it on a Vercel domain (simple-order-management.vercel.app), but have not yet linked it to my custom one (simpleorder.co.uk).

The site would be a critical piece of software for any business that uses it, and I don't take this responsibility lightly. I want it to be robust before anyone uses it day-to-day.

I hope to start usability testing in the coming weeks to see whether I'm on the right track to creating a product that solves a genuine problem like I imagined.

Route (app)                                  Size     First Load JS
┌ ○ /                                        5.8 kB          115 kB
├ ○ /_not-found                              983 B           106 kB
├ ƒ /accept-invitation/[token]               2.33 kB         111 kB
├ ○ /account                                 216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/authentication/create-account       216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/authentication/email/confirm        216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/authentication/sign-in              216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/authentication/sign-out             216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/authentication/verify-token         216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/inventory/admin                     216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/inventory/admin/[itemId]            216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/inventory/merchants/[merchantSlug]  216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/invitations                         216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/invitations/[token]                 216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/orders                              216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/orders/[orderId]                    216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/orders/admin                        216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/payments/create-checkout-session    216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/payments/webhook                    216 B           105 kB
├ ƒ /api/relationships                       216 B           105 kB
├ ○ /articles                                175 B           109 kB
├ ● /articles/[slug]                         175 B           109 kB
├   ├ /articles/how-it-works
├   ├ /articles/some-article
├   ├ /articles/another-article
├   └ [+5 more paths]
├ ○ /checkout                                1.24 kB         114 kB
├ ○ /confirm                                 1.16 kB         110 kB
├ ○ /create-account                          216 B           105 kB
├ ○ /customers                               2.18 kB         125 kB
├ ○ /dashboard                               2.02 kB         114 kB
├ ○ /free-trial                              1.69 kB         114 kB
├ ○ /inventory                               15.9 kB         148 kB
├ ○ /orders                                  2.83 kB         135 kB
├ ƒ /orders/[merchantSlug]                   1.25 kB         114 kB
├ ƒ /orders/[merchantSlug]/new               3.1 kB          126 kB
├ ○ /settings                                2.14 kB         124 kB
└ ○ /sign-in                                 1.43 kB         114 kB

○  (Static)   prerendered as static content
●  (SSG)      prerendered as static HTML (uses generateStaticParams)
ƒ  (Dynamic)  server-rendered on demand

Conclusion

Simple Order has been an immensely gratifying project. Coding feels very different when thinking about other people and how they will use your work.

While the business concept has potential, the principal value for me has been in what I have learned: strengthening my full-stack and product development skills, all the auxiliary knowledge I've picked up along the way, and creating a project demonstrating my ability to translate user needs into technical solutions.