Indie Catalogue
Making shopping for independents online easier. A side project that me and Emily Redfearn created during the second lock-down 2020.
Tech
Firebase
Netlify
Nuxt js
Vue.js
When the second lock-down was announced at the end of October 2020 - Emily and myself started the platform as we found that it was hard to find many independent sellers other than through word of mouth, especially if you are relatively unestablished or have an independent website. Our initial goal was to help indies receive more sales in the run up to Christmas during the pandemic. But we are hoping to expand further in the upcoming new year.
Once we came up with the idea and what we wanted to do with the site, we had a mammoth job of collating all of the indies. To tackle this, I created a shared Google Sheet that both of us could enter details from all sources of communications - which is downloaded as a CSV and then converted into json. This json file is then added to firebase via a upload script. Allowing us to manage and keep a record of previous versions of the database.
Firebase Cloud Storage and Firebase Realtime Database are used to hold the data from all the indies along with tracking the most popular indies.
I also designed the site with Adobe XD for both of us to see and make any changes before I started to build the site.
Indie Catalogue has been a small success in our eyes, we set out to collate independent businesses and markers to buy from before Christmas.
This has resulted in showcasing many unique gifts that we have been unable to find anywhere else, all made by independents rather than large companies. In addition to this, we've received feedback from many of the markers that are on our site confirming they have received more sales and traffic through Indie Catalogue.
We had over 200 submissions with more to add over the new year period, 2K site visits in a month and nearly 1,700 followers between Twitter and Instagram. If you know any indies that would like to get involved please visit Indie Catalogue's FAQs to find out how to get involved.
