BULQ.com Wholesale eCommerce
BULQ has supplied thousands of resellers with millions of dollars worth of inventory to power their businesses.
Goal & Context
Small business owners wanted a way to source returned and excess retail goods, and Optoro needed to liquidate these same goods. A sales team was offering inventory to medium and large buyers, but scaling this team to work with small buyers was cost-prohibitive. The design and product team was asked to create an ecommerce site where small business owners could directly purchase inventory.
Results
During it's first year, BULQ.com sold millions of dollars worth of inventory to thousands of small buyers via bulq.com and the bulq mobile app. Since then, BULQ has served over 1.2 million customers and processed goods worth more than $500M retail.
UX Design Process
Concept
I worked closely with a branding consultant to interview stakeholders, survey the competitive landscape, and generate ideas for how we could bring our direct-sales business to a wider audience.
Empathy
I organized and lead a series of interviews with experts and existing customers to validate assumptions and discover insights. This input helped us refine our concept and decide on a set of values that would form the pillars of our brand. I lead the creation of personas that crystallized our findings and represented our core buyers.
Ideation
Working from sketches and creating storyboards, user flows, and a comprehensive set of wireframes, I lead a cross-functional team in exploring our concept in more depth and refining individual flows, screens, and layouts.
Prototype
With a critical mass of wireframes, I used InVision to create clickable prototypes to simulate the site. Working with a visual designer, I created high-fidelity wireframes which we used to build a high-fidelity prototype.
Testing
By collecting feedback from customers with our prototypes, we were able to make important content and layout changes at low cost and without code changes.
Product Roadmap
Since launch, the team has added several features following a similar process. Features like new inventory notifications; smaller, lower-cost lot sizes; and new ways to search and browse through inventory have been successful for our customers and our business.
Team
As BULQ has grown from concept into a full-fledged business, the team had grown in lockstep. It's been my privilege to have worked with everyone involved in BULQ.com, the BULQ iOS app, ecommerce operations, and BULQ marketing. A few of the roles I worked most closely with are:
- UX Lead (Me)
- Product Manager
- Development Lead
- Visual Designer
- Marketing Team
- Executive Stakeholders