Baton

Behind the scenes of building: Baton

I experienced the pain point of product returns firsthand while building The Workshop. Returns destroy margins due to shipping, processing, pick & packing, and warehousing costs. 49% of stores offer free return shipping and the average return rate for online orders is 30%. It's also a big environmental problem in the U.S. with over 5 billion lbs. of returned goods sent to the landfill each year.

Baton was created to rethink the returns flow. It enables retailers to easily create peer-to-peer exchanges at the point of sale. Rather than retuning items back to the warehouse, customers can ship items directly to new patrons who have the same order. Returners prevent potential landfill waste, buyers receive a discount for purchasing pre-loved items, and retailers benefit from higher margins and reduced emissions. 

I interviewed over 50 Shopify retailers and shoppers during the customer discovery phase to validate the problem and uncover pain point insights. Next, I scoped, designed, and built an MVP using no-code tools. The web application tech stack included Adalo for the front end and user authentication, Airtable for the back end, Shopify for eCommerce integration, Twilio for customer messaging, and Zapier to automate workflows.

The sales deck

The Demo