Completed

Cercle: Fashion Rental Marketplace

Services Covered:

Web Application Development • E-commerce Development

Industry

Apparel and Fashion

12 months

Budget

50K - 199K

Start Date

1 March 2022

Team Size

1-5

Engagement Model

Offshore

Project Capability Score (PCS)

N/A

Not Available

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Client

Cercle

United Kingdom

Project Summary

A fashion rental platform that lets users rent clothing, shoes, and accessories from lenders — promoting borrow-over-buy sustainability at a fraction of retail cost. Cercle.uk needed a high-end sustainable fashion rental marketplace — lenders listing luxury items for income, renters accessing those items at lower cost, with reliable payments, returns, clothing renewal, and multi-channel sales.

Key Challenges

Slow loads frustrated users, raised bounce rates, and cut engagement and sales. Without store credits in the payment module, customers were stuck with cash, cards, or transfers — less flexible checkout and weaker loyalty after refunds. Expanding reach meant users expected seamless shopping on social channels as well as the site. Renewing worn rental clothes for resale needed a reliable partner for cleaning, repair, and logistics. Bugs left delivery and payment statuses wrong, causing mismanagement between business and users. Tight deadlines risked delayed launches and quality cuts.

Project Deliverables

Advanced search & filters: Powerful search with filters, caching, and indexing so renters find the right item quickly. Rental reminders: Push notifications near rental end so customers return items and route them through ACS renewal. Admin operations (Solidus): Admin tools for listings, users, cancel/refund policies, taxation, and shipping. ACS integration: Clothing renewal pipeline with Advanced Clothing Solutions after each rental cycle. Order management: One system consolidating orders across sales channels. Location-based delivery charges: Checkout calculates delivery from address and basket size, with postal-code and city suggestions as the user types.

Project Solution

We optimized product data handling and image caching, and moved heavy work to Sidekiq so the UI stays responsive. We built a wallet / store-credits flow for refunds and cancellations, with encryption, secure tokenization, and regular security reviews. We integrated Facebook e-commerce APIs so catalogs, inventory, and orders stay in sync between the site and Facebook. We connected Advanced Clothing Solutions (ACS) so used items ship from the renter, get renewed, and return to inventory. We fixed Solidus admin configuration and status code paths so delivery and payment states stay accurate. We ran agile sprints with smaller iterations and regular checkpoints to protect quality and ship on time.

Project Outcome

Faster performance cut bounce rates and supported higher sales. Ordering and returning used products became a smoother, lower-friction flow. Better filtering helped users match preferences and decide faster. Admin tools for discount codes and promotions made campaign ops more efficient. Stripe plus store credits improved refund UX and kept spend on-platform.