NEW!
UX DESIGN
Ecommerce
Material Exchange
Over the last year, I led design with a small team to create and launch Material Marketplace, allowing manufacturers to buy and sell excess materials; reducing waste by finding buyers that want to acquire ingredients below minimum-order quantities.
Timeline
1 year
Team
Executive and Product Lead
Role
Strategy, Research, Architecture
Problem & Challenges
One of the core problems we set out to solve with the marketplace was reducing “excess material waste” the cost of storing and disposing of ingredients whose projects or contracts have been terminated. We wanted to create a place where excess could be listed, searched and traded at fair prices to brands and manufacturers that could make use of them.
Sell - List excess materials (including package information)
Buy - Search available materials (view details)
Negotiation - Settle on fair pricing via anonymous negotiation
Shipping - Agree on and charge for delivery handled by either party
Secure Transactions - Penny testing with accounting departments, invoice documentation
Research
How I learned
Before building the platform, we ran a simple beta using email as a lightweight prototype so we could learn fast. We held group interviews with the businesses involved and then did a contextual inquiry by facilitating a real transaction ourselves. Working through the process end to end exposed the practical details that make or break a trade in manufacturing supply: what information needs to be confirmed, where delays happen, and what both sides need to feel confident moving forward.
How it shaped the design
Those insights shifted our focus from “messages” to “process.” We designed the marketplace around structured inventory information and guided transaction steps—so key details are clear upfront and each trade progresses through simple, trackable checkpoints from agreement to shipment.
Key Solution
A raw-material marketplace where manufacturers can sell excess inventory and buyers can source smaller quantities for pilots, R&D, or short runs that don’t meet minimum-order requirements. Listings follow a standard format, and the platform guides each trade step by step with clear confirmations so both sides can transact with confidence.
Final Outcome
The marketplace shipped and launched with a small beta group (about 20 users). Early use validated the concept—roughly 100 inquiries came through, and several trades successfully closed—which gave us enough confidence to move from “middleman-by-email” into a real platform.
How the design evolved: handling inbound inquiries was still too time-consuming, and sellers wanted bulk inventory upload. In response, we improved how inquiries were managed, reduced manual middleman involvement, and shifted the product toward an inventory-first workflow—work that continued into an inventory manager and an AI helper to keep transactions moving with less back-and-forth.
Feedback
We learned that an inquiry-first flow created too much noise and too many stalled threads. Busy sellers—especially executives—didn’t have time to respond to low-signal questions, and deals were easy to ghost when follow-up depended on manual back-and-forth. That pushed us toward an inventory-first approach, with bulk upload and an inventory manager to reduce notifications and help trades move forward more reliably.
Success Metrics
Inquiries per listing
How many buyer requests come in.
How to calculate: Add up how many new buyer inquiries came in during the period, then divide by how many weeks are in that period.
Inquiry response rate
How often sellers reply on time (24-48 hours).
How to calculate: Look at each inquiry and check whether the seller’s first reply happened within the time window. The response rate is the share of inquiries that meet that cutoff.
Offer-to-transaction conversion rate
How often offers turn into completed deals.
How to calculate: The conversion rate is the portion of offers that turned into closed deals.
Transaction volume ($ or lbs/tons moved)
Total business done.
How to calculate: For every completed transaction, take the recorded dollar amount (or quantity) and add them together for the period.
Email Based MVP
Early iterations required significant participation to result in successful transaction matching, but this allowed us to validate that our users had the need and willingness to participate in order to make sales and purchases.
Inquiry Transaction Platform
Creating the Inquiry based platform allowed us to quickly transition away from email, which was cumbersome to use and was a significant bottleneck and cluttered system of email threads for facilitators. This allowed us to conduct inquiry and responses on a dedicated platform, reducing middleman involvement significantly.
Inventory Listing Marketplace
Inventory listing allowed us to transition away from participation and notification heavy inquiry-based transactions by allowing users to upload any available excess inventory, and allowed us to create a searchable marketplace for buyers to look through to find if their needed materials were available on the site. The tradeoff of not initially including bulk upload meant that we could spend the time to properly integrate uploading to work properly with various resource management systems.
Next Steps
The next evolution is an AI agent that acts as a neutral transaction facilitator. It will help both parties move a deal forward at the same time—answering product questions from the listing and history, guiding negotiation, and coordinating each step with clear confirmations. Just as importantly, it will surface where the process is getting stuck (waiting on pricing, availability, pickup details, etc.) and prompt the right next action, so trades don’t quietly stall. To build trust and reduce risk, the agent maintains anonymity through the early and mid stages of the deal, then progressively unlocks the minimum needed information in the final shipping and fulfillment steps.
