[Caravel Case Study] Creating a Consignment Store Intake Solution

Bringing the consignment information system into the modern age requires curiosity and an open mind. Fortunately, the team at Caravel has plenty of both. Caravel is a turn-key solution for the modern consignment store. It’s a side project that I’ve been working on with some friends from college. As the team member responsible for product and UX, my goal is to take as much effort out of the consignment process as I possibly can, while working within the constraints of our technology.

Existing consignment information system solutions fall short on several of their product offerings. In this case study, I’m going to address one of the most difficult (and as-of-yet unsolved for) parts of the consignment process - item intake. The scope of this case study will only consider the product design from the consignor’s perspective. The design for the store’s perspective is currently in progress.

Problem Statement

In our market research, one of the most frequently-mentioned pain points in the consignment store management workflow is bringing in new items to consign. For those that are unfamiliar with the consignment business, consignment stores agree to sell your item in their store for a share of the profit. You provide the item, they do the rest. The intake process currently operates largely over email, text, and facebook messenger. Store owners have commented that keeping up with these chains is cumbersome, heavily manual, and disorganized.

Proposed Solution

Our solution follows a very similar flow to a job application system. The idea is to create a queue of items that the store owner can evaluate from a central location. The store owner can then offer to consign, ask for more information, or decline. The other benefit of using a system like this is the enhanced tracking and organizational capabilities on the part of the consignor. With our dashboard, they can view the status of their requests with the store.

Flowcharting and Sketching

As a part of my design process, I like to make use of flowcharting and sketching. Below are a few assets from my planning phase for this feature.

 

Intake request approval process

 

Cold entry flow

 

Rough sketch of the consignor dashboard

Mockups

Our product is built on a modified version of Material UI, an open-source library of React components that leverage Google’s Material Design standards. These are a couple of the mockups for the desktop experience.

 

Consignor dashboard

 

Intake form

Results

Our pilot stores have responded really well to our design. One piece of feedback they gave early in the review process was that they didn’t want to give the consignor too much information. For example, a consignor may be unhappy if they discover the item has been discounted, even if they agreed to the discount structure in the contract. Additionally, they suggested we remove the ability for a consignor to see an item’s expiration date. This came from concerns regarding getting a high volume of phone calls from consignors pestering them about not selling their item when it gets close to the expiration date.

We took this feedback under advisement and built our v1.1 (seen above).

Next Steps

With the framework for the intake request system in place, the next item on the to-do list is to build out the mobile experience. Mobile poses an interesting challenge for this specific environment because it makes use of horizontal data display in its table view. Check back soon to see the solution!