Product Lifecycle Dashboard
MerchFlow is a product lifecycle management dashboard built for merchandising teams who were drowning in Excel spreadsheets and Slack threads.
📦 The Chaos Before: 12 people editing shared Google Sheets → version conflicts, overwritten data, zero audit trail. "Who approved the purple variant?" became an unsolvable mystery.
🚀 What MerchFlow Brings to the Table
- Kanban-style pipeline: Drag products through stages (Concept → Design → Sample → Launch)
- Real-time collaboration: See who's viewing what + live cursors (like Figma, but for merchandise)
- Approval workflows: "Need design review?" → Tag stakeholders → They get Slack notification → Approve with 1 click
- Vendor integration: Auto-sync with suppliers' APIs—track sample shipment status without leaving the dashboard
- Cost tracking: Set budget alerts—get pinged when a product exceeds cost targets
🏗️ System Architecture
| Frontend | React 18 + Redux Toolkit (normalized state for 1000+ products) |
| Backend | Node.js + Express + PostgreSQL (relational data for audit logs) |
| Real-time | Socket.io for presence indicators + optimistic updates |
🎯 Performance Optimizations
- Virtual scrolling: Render only visible rows (react-window) → handle 10,000 products without lag
- Debounced search: Wait 300ms after typing before hitting API → reduces server load by 80%
- Cursor pagination: Load products in chunks of 50 → no "Load More" button needed
- Redis caching: Frequently accessed products cached for 5 minutes → 10x faster page loads
💡 Fun challenge solved: How to show "Who's online?" without polling every second? Answer: WebSocket heartbeats + server-side timeout tracking
📊 Metrics That Matter
40% faster
time-to-launch vs. old process
Zero
version conflicts in 6 months
Ideal for fashion brands, consumer goods companies, or any team launching physical products at scale
- StackJavaScript, React, Node.js
- Sourcehttps://github.com/Shorya-agarwal/MerchFlow
