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Making online wholesale clear enough to trust
Small retailers were expected to place wholesale orders worth tens of thousands of rupees without ever meeting the supplier. I led the end-to-end design of a B2B marketplace that turned that leap of faith into a product people could trust.
Role
Lead UX Designer
Timeline
4 months to design, 5 to ship
Stage
0-to-1, pre-launch
Platforms
Buyer (mobile web), Seller (web app)
Team
Fawaz & me (design), with PM, engineering, business, ops
The Real Problem
It was never about finding products
Small retailers weren't struggling to find products. They were struggling to trust people they'd never met — with orders worth tens of thousands of rupees, paid before anything arrived.
Everything else followed from that.
[ Before Designing Anything ]
I mapped the uncertainty before the screens
There were dozens of features we could have built. Instead of designing everything, I focused on the three uncertainties that could stop a wholesale purchase. Every product decision traced back to one of them.
Trust Supplier
Is this business reliable?
Understand Pricing
What am I actually paying?
Receive Correct Order
Will the right goods actually arrive?
[ The Decision That Shaped It ]
Removing uncertainty, one decision at a time
Every buying decision introduced uncertainty—understanding the price, trusting the final payable, and knowing when verification belonged. These decisions reduced that uncertainty step by step.
[ 01 ] [ Price Clarity ]
Make wholesale pricing understandable.
Wholesale buyers compare products by the cost of a single piece while balancing pack size, MOQ and bulk discounts. The interface made those relationships immediately understandable.
Compare confidently
per-piece, not per-pack
Understand commitment
pack quantity
See real savings
discount slab
Buying decisions start with understanding, not calculation.
[ 02 ] [ Purchase Confidence ]
Never show a price we can’t commit to
Rather than promising a price we couldn’t guarantee, we separated estimated and committed pricing. Buyers first see an estimate, with the final payable calculated only after the delivery address is confirmed.
Show an estimate before delivery is known
Commit only after the address is confirmed
Pricing should become more certain as commitment increases.
[ 03 ] [ Trust Building ]
Gate the action, not the exploration.
KYC was mandatory. The real design decision wasn’t whether to verify buyers, but when to ask. I explored three approaches before placing verification on the action that required trust—not on the browsing that built it.
Three approaches considered
Hide prices behind KYC
Too much friction before buyers could evaluate the marketplace.
Ask for KYC at checkout
The gate appears at the moment of highest purchase intent.
Nudge early, require before ordering
Explore freely. Verify only when the action requires trust.
Trust is earned through exploration, not enforced through friction.
Buyer trust starts with seller operations
The promise only holds if the seller side does
[ 01 ] [ Platform Architecture ]
Not every catalogue change carries the same business risk.
Price and inventory go live instantly, while product content passes through validation and quality checks before reaching buyers.
[ 02 ] [ Behaviour Change ]
Reduce cancellation by changing the mental model
Instead of asking sellers whether they wanted to accept an order, we assumed commitment and designed the workflow around fulfilment.
[ 03 ] [ Operations ]
Designed for the person packing the box
Operators worked from the system, but packers worked on the warehouse floor. I proposed a printable packing slip that helped them pick the right items and pack within carrier size limits.
Validated with suppliers and shipped as part of the final workflow.
Designing Beyond Screens
Leading two platforms with a team of two
Four months, two designers, two connected apps. Leading here was less about screens and more about what let a small team move fast without losing quality.
One shared design system
Instead of maintaining two separate products, we built one shared component system with brand-level theming, allowing both buyer and seller products to evolve consistently.
Roadmap
Rather than designing everything, I worked with PMs to decide what deserved engineering investment before launch—and what could safely wait.
Design Reviews
Weekly critiques became less about polishing screens and more about improving product decisions.
Engineering
Designs weren’t handed off—they were shaped alongside engineering constraints from the beginning.
[ Product Strategy ]
Built for launch. Designed for scale.
We deliberately narrowed the first release to existing suppliers and their buyers. The architecture left room to expand without rebuilding the core experience.
Built for Launch
✓ Single-supplier cart
✓ Bulk catalogue upload
✓ One delivery charge
✓ Two-path KYC
✓ Commitment-first OMS
✓ Shared design system
Designed for Scale
○ Multi-seller cart
○ Marketplace discovery
○ Wider buyer/seller network
○ Rich search
○ Recommendations
[ Reflection ]