Mercato - Group #9

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Inspiration

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage through our communities, the world as we know it has changed to a reality where businesses are in a substantial decline. Due to restrictions implemented by the Canadian government, small businesses have been struggling to make sales to the general public. Our primary inspiration comes from major e-commerce retailers and websites that sell goods to the public. We felt that this is a successful business model and basing everything based off of previous successes would be a great idea. With our application, our intention is to help small businesses reach their consumers once again and prosper like they once did.

What it does

Mercato is an application that will allow users to purchase and compare products such as garments, shoes, and household goods, sold by various retailers. The retailers will be allowed to market whichever products they wish, as long as guidelines are met. Users can purchase a product from a small business, which will then be available for pickup by a driver who can deliver it to the user’s doorstep. This prevents COVID-19 interaction between the business and the customer while small businesses can continue to boost sales.

How we built it

Our team built the user interface using Adobe XD, a challenging software which requires immense expertise. This software allowed to make it visually appealing and minimalist, a goal set from the very start of the project.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a plethora of challenges based upon the UI, the presentation, and the overall idea. We struggled to first identify an issue that stemmed from COVID-19, but, once we had that it was steady sailing. The small issues that came up were deciding an appealing UI and presentation. It was difficult to use Adobe XD to create an interactive UI, however, we persevered and perfected it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are immensely proud of our UI design that was made with Adobe XD. Since this was our team’s first (and for some, second) time using the software, we were challenged to create a good product and be successful. We are also proud of our business plan in which we used our knowledge from past experiences and incorporated it into our final product.

What we learned

Through this project, we learned the importance of time management and using each individual in the team’s time wisely. No matter what field us as students will enter, these skills will be important.

What's next for Mercato

Mercato wishes to grow in the future and spread out globally. By doing so we also want to spread out to major retailers and brands to sell on Mercato. Once we spread out to them we wish to gain on having a monopoly on this unexplored market worldwide. Therefore, our main long-term goals are to expand nationally and internationally as well as expand our marketplace’s businesses list.