Challenge
A craftsman makes things a buyer on another continent would want and has no way at all to sell them there. What is needed is a shop that speaks to a foreign buyer in their language, accepts their card, and can send a fragile object across a border.
Solution
The shop was built around two difficulties ordinary local retail never meets.
The first is accepting international cards: different security requirements, different behaviour on a decline, a mandatory cardholder check. The second is shipping out of the country, where the address arrives in an unfamiliar format, the price depends on weight and zone, and delivery times have to be given before payment rather than after.
Everything else was familiar.
Architecture and implementation
The catalogue held pottery and craft work, paid for with international cards. Shipping abroad was priced by weight and destination, and checkout accepted an address in international format.
Buyers could follow their order history and the status of a shipment, and were warned about delivery times before payment rather than after it.
Result
The shop launched in 2014. It is the earliest work we show publicly, and the unbroken run of projects up to today starts here.
The project was our own and closed long ago. The problem did not go away: a local maker and a buyer abroad are still separated by a card and a courier.
