Shop Local

Inspiration

The idea was sparked by a teammate's family who owns a small business. We saw firsthand how difficult it is for local shops to build brand awareness and attract customers while competing against massive corporations with larger marketing budgets. We wanted to level the playing field.

What it does

Our app takes a problem-solution approach to local shopping. Users simply input a specific need or problem they are facing, and the application instantly connects them with local, independent businesses equipped to solve that exact issue.

How we built it

We designed the user experience in Figma and built a responsive frontend using React.js, HTML, and Tailwind CSS. For the backend logic, we used Claude Code to help script the integration with the Google Places API to gather local business data. Finally, we implemented the Gemini API to semantically analyze the user's input and match it with the most relevant local business results.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest hurdle was seamlessly integrating the frontend and backend. Ensuring that the data fetched from the APIs flowed smoothly into our React components took hours of debugging and problem-solving, but overcoming this integration challenge was incredibly rewarding.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are incredibly proud to have built a fully functional prototype within the time limit. It serves as a strong, scalable foundation for an application that can make a real difference in helping local economies thrive.

What we learned

Beyond mastering new technologies and tools(e.g. complex API integration and full-stack development) we learned the invaluable skill of collaborative coding. Figuring out how to merge our work and communicate effectively as a technical team was our biggest takeaway.