Espee Marketplace: Designing a Managed Marketplace That Feels Like One Trusted Store
As Product Designer, I designed Espee Marketplace, a managed e-commerce platform powered by Espees (SPS), a global digital currency and blockchain-based payment system.
At first glance, the experience feels familiar. Customers browse products, add items to their cart, pay using Espees, and track their delivery. What they never see is everything happening behind the scenes. Every product is supplied by a verified seller. Sellers manage their inventory, prepare orders, and hand them over to Espee through rider pickups or fulfillment center drop-offs. From that point onward, Espee manages delivery, customer communication, and the overall shopping experience.
My role was to design the buyer, seller, and operational experiences so they work together as one product while keeping the buying journey simple and consistent.
The Product Challenge
Most marketplaces are built around sellers. You compare stores, check seller ratings, decide who to trust, then place your order. Espee Marketplace takes a different approach.
The platform is powered by verified sellers, but buyers are never expected to think about who those sellers are. Every interaction is designed to feel like buying directly from Espee.
That decision sounds like branding, but it quickly became a product challenge. Every order sets off a chain of operational events behind the scenes. Sellers receive new orders, prepare packages, choose how they want to fulfill them, operations teams coordinate fulfillment, riders complete deliveries, and customers simply expect their package to arrive on time.
The challenge wasn't designing another marketplace. It was designing a marketplace that hides its own complexity.
Understanding the Ecosystem
Although customers interact with a single brand, the product supports three interconnected experiences.
Buyers
Browse products, place orders, pay with Espees, and track deliveries through a familiar shopping experience.
Sellers
Manage products, update inventory, process incoming orders, prepare packages, and choose between requesting rider pickup or delivering packages to an Espee fulfillment center.
Operations & Logistics
Coordinate fulfillment, monitor package movement, assign riders, and ensure every order reaches the customer.
Each group has completely different goals, but the experience should feel connected rather than fragmented.
Product Goals
- Make shopping feel like buying directly from Espee rather than individual sellers.
- Give verified sellers efficient tools for managing inventory and fulfilling orders.
- Create a standardized fulfillment process regardless of how sellers hand over packages.
- Keep operational complexity away from buyers.
- Build a scalable foundation that supports marketplace growth without changing the customer experience.
Key Design Decision 01
Trust Should Live With the Brand
Customers don't actually want to evaluate dozens of different sellers every time they shop. They simply want confidence that the product will arrive as expected.
Instead of making individual sellers the center of the experience, the platform puts Espee at the center. Verified sellers operate behind the scenes while Espee owns the customer relationship — from browsing and payment to delivery and support.
That decision influenced almost every screen in the product.
Key Design Decision 02
One Product, Three Experiences
Buyers want simplicity. Browse. Buy. Track.
Sellers need operational tools. Inventory management. Order processing. Package preparation. Pickup requests.
Operations teams need visibility into everything happening between those two experiences.
Instead of forcing everyone into one workflow, each experience was designed around the decisions its users need to make.
From Problem to Solution
| Product Challenge | Design Decision |
|---|---|
| Buyers shouldn't have to evaluate individual sellers. | Designed a unified customer experience where Espee owns the relationship with the buyer. |
| Sellers need efficient operational tools. | Built dedicated inventory, order management, and fulfillment workflows. |
| Fulfillment can happen in multiple ways. | Standardized the experience around two handover methods: rider pickup or fulfillment center drop-off. |
| Multiple teams are involved after every purchase. | Designed connected workflows for sellers, operations teams, and riders while keeping the customer journey simple. |
| Espees is a different payment ecosystem. | Integrated payments into a familiar checkout experience rather than introducing new shopping behaviours. |
Designing the Experience
Buyer Experience
The buyer experience focuses on confidence. Customers should be able to discover products, understand what they're purchasing, complete payments with Espees, and track deliveries without thinking about the operational systems supporting their order.
Buyer App — Browse, Checkout & Tracking
Landing page — new visitor
Categories, trending products, and daily deals before you ever sign in.
Landing page — registered user
Espee balance in the header, add-to-cart inline, and recently viewed items.
Product details
Specs, delivery estimate, return policy, and warranty before adding to cart.
Cart
Review items, adjust quantities, and see the running total in Espees.
Checkout
Delivery address, Espee Wallet payment, and a full order summary.
Espee Wallet
Balance, funding, and a full transaction history in SPS.
Order history
Ongoing, delivered, and cancelled orders — with rating once delivered.
Saved items
Everything held for later, ready to move into the cart.
Seller Experience
The seller experience focuses on efficiency. Sellers can manage inventory, receive orders, prepare packages, request rider pickup, or deliver packages directly to an Espee fulfillment center.
Seller Dashboard — Inventory, Orders & Fulfillment
Seller homepage
Store performance, active orders, and what needs attention today.
All orders
Incoming orders to accept, prepare, and hand over for fulfillment.
Order details
Line items, buyer delivery info, and the fulfillment handover step.
Inventory
Every product, its stock level, and its status in one list.
Add a product
Product details, images, and category — the listing itself.
Set pricing
Price in Espees, available quantity, and variant options.
Design Principles
Familiar Before Different
Shopping should feel familiar even though payments are powered by Espees.
Hide Complexity
Customers only see what they need. Operational complexity stays behind the scenes.
One Brand, One Experience
Every interaction reinforces trust in Espee regardless of which seller fulfills the order.
Reflection
Espee Marketplace reminded me that good product design isn't always about adding features. Sometimes it's about deciding what users should never have to think about.
Designing Espee challenged me to think beyond interfaces and consider the relationships between commerce, logistics, and operations.
It reinforced an idea that continues to influence how I design products today: the more complex the system becomes behind the scenes, the simpler the experience should feel for the people using it.
Building something ambitious?
Whether you're launching from scratch or refining an existing product, I'd love to hear what you're working on.