Reversed shop scenario

[amadeus-torwell]

Hi everyone,

I just started looking into vendure - and I have a design question.

Is it theoretical / architectural possible (or is there even something in code) that would enable vendure to act as a reversed shop? Basically this means I want to send people money (upfront) for sending items to the shop (including shipping etc.).

Thanks 👍
Amadeus

[michaelbromley]

Hi, I've not come across this concept before. Can you go into more detail about the exact work flow you'd like to support? Like a high-level step by step list of actions & transactions taken by the parties involved?

[amadeus-torwell]

Sure, instead of selling an item to a customer think of buying an item through the shop from a customer:

1. Shop lists an item "Guitar Gibson" for up to $1.000
2. Customer want's to sell his Gibson guitar in medium condition
3. Shop asks some questions like "Does your guitar have any scratches?", "How old is your guitar?" -> Some algorithm (external service) estimates a price (let's say $700)
4. Customer prints shipping label and sends guitar to the shop owner
5. Money is flowing from the shop to the customer (via PayPal or whatever payment service)

[michaelbromley]

Thanks for the explanation. I think it might be possible to support this with Vendure. Here's how it might be workable:

1. A ProductVariant in Vendure would correspond to a "listing".
2. When a customer clicks "bid on this listing" you add that ProductVariant to the Order (addItemToOrder mutation)
3. Answers to the questions can be stored in custom fields on the OrderLine entity.
4. You'd need a custom PaymentMethodHandler which doesn't actually take any payment.
5. You'd use a custom order process to model any steps between "checkout" (customer making bid on listing), and "shipping" (sending payment to customer).