Description
Summary We are an established collectibles resale business looking for an experienced developer to help us implement a practical, cost-effective inventory management system. We have a clear understanding of our business requirements and workflow, but we are not committed to a particular technology or platform. We are looking for a developer who can evaluate those requirements, recommend an appropriate technical approach, and implement the resulting system. About Our Business We acquire and sell a high volume of collectible items. Some inventory is purchased and owned by us, while other inventory is sold on consignment for individual owners. Each physical item is unique for inventory purposes. Even when we receive multiple examples of the same collectible, each may have a different age, condition, value, owner, physical location, photographs, and sales history. Our current processes require a substantial amount of manual work to identify, catalog, photograph, track, list, sell, and fulfill these items. We are looking for a centralized system that makes this process faster, more accurate, and scalable. What We Need the System to Do Individual Item Tracking Each physical item needs its own inventory record and unique ID/barcode. The record needs to maintain information specific to that item, including condition, ownership, photographs, physical location, status, pricing, and sales information. Master Product / Reference Database We frequently handle different examples of the same collectible. We need the ability to maintain master/reference information about a known product separately from the individual physical items in inventory. When a known product enters inventory, existing reference information should be reusable rather than manually re-entered each time. Condition & Historical Pricing Condition has a substantial impact on value in the collectibles market. We need structured condition information rather than relying entirely on free-form notes. We would also like to retain historical pricing and sales information so that previous experience with the same or similar collectible can be referenced when evaluating and pricing future inventory. Barcode & Location Tracking We need to generate and print a unique barcode for each physical item and use barcode scanning as part of our workflow. Employees should be able to scan an item to retrieve its record and track its physical location as it moves through intake, photography, storage, listing, sale, and fulfillment. Photography Each individual item will typically have 3-20 photographs associated with its inventory record. The process of matching photographs to the correct inventory item needs to be efficient at high volume. Owned & Consigned Inventory The system needs to handle both company-owned and consigned inventory. Consigned items need to remain associated with the appropriate consignor, including relevant consignment terms, commission percentage, sale proceeds, amount due, and settlement/payment status. Multiple Sales Channels Inventory may be sold through our physical retail location as well as Shopify, eBay, Etsy, Facebook/Meta, and online auctions. Our goal is to maintain a central inventory record regardless of where an item is offered or sold. We expect ecommerce and marketplace integrations to be an important part of the system, although some integrations or automation may be appropriate for later phases. Auction Sales Our auction workflow has an additional requirement: multiple individually tracked inventory items may sometimes be grouped together and sold as a single auction lot. The individual inventory records need to be preserved while also being associated with the combined auction lot and resulting sale. Search, Reporting & Workflow Employees need to be able to quickly search and filter inventory by criteria such as item number, product/reference number, consignor, condition, ownership, physical location, status, sales channel, and dates. The system will be used by multiple employees at different stages of the process, so ease of use and workflow efficiency are important. Future Growth We want to establish a strong inventory/data foundation that can support additional automation as the business grows. Potential future capabilities may include additional marketplace integrations, cross-channel inventory synchronization, automated or assisted listing creation, AI-assisted product identification and descriptions, pricing recommendations based on historical data, image automation, and expanded reporting. We do not expect every future capability to be included in the initial implementation. Relevant Experience We are particularly interested in developers with experience building or customizing inventory and operational systems, including experience with established ERP or application frameworks such as Odoo, ERPNext/Frappe, or comparable platforms. Experience with these specific platforms is not required, and we are open to other technical approaches. * Inventory management systems * ERP development or customization * Relational databases * Barcode or warehouse inventory systems * Consignment or resale systems * Ecommerce and marketplace integrations * API integrations * POS/inventory integrations * Business process/workflow automation * Internal business applications We are interested in making appropriate use of established technology where doing so can reduce development time and cost. We are not committed to a particular platform, framework, or technology and are looking for the developer's recommendation based on our requirements. What We'd Like to Know in Your Proposal At this stage, we are not asking applicants to provide a detailed system architecture or complete project plan. Please include: 1. Relevant experience: Briefly describe your experience building or customizing inventory, ERP, ecommerce, database, or similar operational systems. 2. Comparable projects: Please share examples of relevant systems you have worked on and explain your role in those projects. 3. Your initial perspective: Based on the requirements above, briefly describe the general direction you would consider for this project and why. We are not asking for a detailed technical solution at this stage. 4. Preliminary cost range: Please provide a general budget range you believe is realistic for an initial functional version of the system described above. We understand that a firm price will require additional discussion and a defined scope. 5. What you would need from us: Please tell us what additional information or questions you would want addressed before recommending a specific solution and providing a formal project quote. We prefer a project-based/fixed-price arrangement once the requirements, technical approach, and scope have been established. For applicants who appear to be a good fit, the next step will be a conversation to review our workflow and requirements in greater detail. Our goal will then be to establish an agreed technical approach, project scope, timeline, milestones, and formal development quote.