Inspiration
We are Tokyo Hearth. Our mission includes solving the increasing vacancy problem that is growing in Japan by finding new ideas and ways to fill the space with people or innovation.
What it does
The platform is designed for anyone to customize and rent furniture for empty space whether it be housing, workspaces, or special events. After an order is made, the information is sent to Minikura to account for inventory, availability of rent-able items, and blocking duration for those items. Minikura then confirms this information back to the order, at which point stripe confirms payment, and continues the logistics process of shipping and tracking the rent-able furniture to the desired location.
How we built it
We built the entire thing from scratch, starting with a React boilerplate template for front end. After examining the Minikura API, we realized this can be best used for a programmable warehouse so we product designed and wire-framed around that. We used React for the front end and ruby on rails for the back end, and tried to apply a real-life use-case for the platform.
Challenges we ran into
There were more things we wanted to accomplish through Minikura, such as address validation, shipment and status tracking, and a bidding and prioritizing process for logistics operators to deliver the order. Given the limited time for the Hack-a-thon, we had to choose which feature we wanted to showcase the most.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're very proud of our easy to use interface, design, and smooth usage of Minikura API. We think there is a strong use-case for this API to help solve the growing real estate vacancy problem that is happening in Japan.
What we learned
We learned that there is a real-life possibility of creating a platform that can tie together the housing and real estate market to logistics through a digital platform and Minikura API. This was an area we never gave thought to before and it's nice to think outside the box of our normal industry segment to think of new ways to solve a problem for Japan.
What's next for CloudLife
We hope to take this learning experience and think of ways our organization, Tokyo Hearth, can partner with logistical solutions through technology and digital platforms. We also want to partner with Terrada and Junction in the future to build a real-life platform and solution that does exactly this. Our strength lies within our Marketing and Development capabilities, and we believe we can provide a large network of potential customers as well as simple and usable product solutions to Terrada and Junction.
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