The context
This is an internal product, built and funded by Wisepear techlab. It serves as both platform and demonstration: it is where we put to the test the architectural choices we then propose to clients.
The starting point was an inventory management platform for small businesses — products, suppliers, stock counts, several sites per account.
The challenge
The interesting question arrived after the first version: how far can a generic foundation be specialised by trade before it becomes unmanageable?
A bar, a shop and a workshop all manage stock. But a bar has kegs, wastage, teams on shift and stock counts at the end of the night. Generic inventory management covers that badly; a dedicated application written from scratch costs four times as much.
What we did
We built the foundation, then we actually specialised it — which is the only honest way to verify that a foundation can be specialised.
The shared foundation:
- Product, supplier and stock-count management
- Multiple sites on a single account
- Token-based authentication with refresh
- Offline operation, synchronising when the network returns
- Multilingual interface
- Django back-end, Flutter application
The trade-specific variant, dedicated to bars and cafés, inherits that foundation in full and adds what is specific to it: team and shift management, role tracking during service, and the particulars of beverage stock.
The outcome
Two platforms in active development, the second built on the proven base of the first.
The value of this product to our clients is indirect but real: when we propose a Django + Flutter architecture with offline operation and multi-site support, we are not describing an intention. We are describing something we maintain ourselves, whose limits we know — and which has already let us deliver a second platform without starting over.