Smarter Uniforms: second-hand school uniform marketplace

The idea

Smarter Uniforms helps families in Brighton & Hove buy, sell, swap and donate second-hand school uniforms and sports kits, so clothing stays in use for longer. A general second-hand marketplace doesn’t fit this well: parents look for the uniform of one particular school, and the item they need may not be listed yet.

See how it works

Play video: How Smarter Uniforms works (2 min)

What we built

We built on Sharetribe and added the features the uniform model needs:

• Browsing by school Families choose their school when they sign up or in their profile, and the search filters to that school automatically. Users who haven't chosen a school yet get a reminder, and the school is shown on public profiles.
• Requests with quotes A parent posts what uniform pieces they are looking for. Sellers answer with a quote, using items they already have as suggestions. The parent accepts or declines, and an accepted quote goes to the usual checkout. Requests close automatically after 30 days.
• A weekly email of new items per school Every Friday, families who opted in get an email with the past week's new listings for their school. They choose this at sign-up or on a notification settings page, and their details stay in sync with Mailchimp.
• Donating a sale to school fundraising When listing an item, a seller can donate the sale to the Smarter Uniforms School Fundraising Project. The full sale amount then goes to the project, and buyers see that the purchase is a donation.

We also fixed edge cases in search and added error handling to the scheduled tasks, so requests close and weekly emails go out on time. Smarter Uniforms also offers the marketplace as a mobile app on the App Store and Google Play.

The result

Families in Brighton & Hove find second-hand uniforms for their own school, ask for the pieces they can’t find, and hear about new items for their school every week. Sellers can also turn a sale into support for school fundraising.