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Edishan Lee TenorioAI Automation Specialist & CRM DeveloperSoftware Engineer · Full-Stack Developer · Mobile Developer

04 · Complex business application

MeepleCrate: Rental & Delivery PlatformRentals are not e-commerce. So the back office had to be built, not bought.

A board-game rental and delivery platform serving Colorado and neighboring states: a credit-based subscription storefront on top of a twelve-module operations back office for catalog, physical inventory, service areas, bookings and credits.

Client
MeepleCrate
Year
2024–25
Status
Live in production
Role
Full-stack engineer
MeepleCrate admin inventory screen listing physical game copies with serial numbers, condition, warehouse location, component checks and QR codes.
  1. 1Twelve-module operations sidebar
  2. 2Live stock: total, available, rented, maintenance
  3. 3Every copy tracked by serial and condition
  4. 4Generated QR code per copy
Operations modules in the admin portal
12
Titles synced into catalog & inventory
178
Credit tiers mapped to box size
5

01Problem

A rental business has problems a storefront never models: physical copies that leave and come back, deliveries limited to specific ZIP codes, a credit economy tied to game size, and a catalog of hundreds of titles whose metadata nobody wants to type by hand.

Off-the-shelf e-commerce and subscription tools could take payments, but none of them could track a specific copy of a specific game through delivery, play and return.

02My role

Full-stack engineer, customer site, admin portal, APIs

  • Customer storefront, plans and onboarding
  • Backend APIs and business rules
  • BoardGameGeek and Stripe integrations
  • Location and service-area logic
  • Admin portal and cloud deployment

03System architecture

A public storefront and an operations portal share one API. Integrations handle the parts nobody should do by hand: catalog metadata, payments and service-area checks.

  1. 01 Acquire

    Customer site

    • Plans & credits
    • Waitlist / pre-registration
    • Game & city voting

  2. 02 Decide

    API & business rules

    • Auth & subscriptions
    • Credit ledger
    • Bookings & returns

  3. 03 Integrate

    External systems

    • BoardGameGeek sync
    • Stripe payments
    • ZIP-code service areas

  4. 04 Operate

    Admin portal

    • Inventory + QR codes
    • Bookings & credits
    • CMS & settings

Across every stage

  • Restricted admin access with logging
  • Maintenance & debug modes
  • Cloud deployment

04Implementation

  1. 04.1

    Catalog sync, not data entry

    Titles are pulled from the BoardGameGeek API with players, play time, weight and ratings attached. Admins sync from BGG in one action, and customers requesting a new game search BGG directly from the vote form.

  2. 04.2

    A credit economy with a ledger

    Five tiers by box size, from Mini at 0.25 up to Exclusive at 3 credits, sit underneath monthly plans of 2, 3 or 5 credits. A dedicated credits module tracks circulation, balances and transactions.

  3. 04.3

    Every physical copy is an entity

    Each copy carries a serial number, condition grade, warehouse location, component check and maintenance flag, with a generated QR code for scanning at pick, pack and return.

  4. 04.4

    Service areas and demand-led expansion

    Locations are modelled by city and state with ZIP-code coverage and priority: Boulder, Denver, Aurora. City and game requests from the public site feed a pre-registration pipeline that drives where the service goes next.

  5. 04.5

    Operators control the product

    A content module edits the hero, features, pricing, credit tiers and testimonials without a deploy. System settings expose maintenance and debug modes, and admin sign-in is restricted and logged.

05Outcome

  • Live in production, serving Colorado and neighboring states with weekly Monday deliveries
  • One back office covering catalog, physical inventory, service areas, bookings and credits
  • Catalog maintained through BoardGameGeek sync instead of manual entry
  • Expansion decisions driven by in-app city and game voting
  • Java Spring Boot
  • Laravel
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • PostgreSQL
  • Stripe
  • BoardGameGeek API
  • AWS

06Screens

MeepleCrate homepage: 'Board games, delivered to your door.'
Fig. 01Customer site, live in production.
MeepleCrate admin dashboard with users, bookings, available games and revenue.
Fig. 02Admin portal: twelve modules in one sidebar.
Game management screen with a 'Sync from BGG' action.
Fig. 03Catalog synced from BoardGameGeek.
Locations screen listing Boulder, Denver and Aurora with ZIP-code counts and priority.
Fig. 04Service areas modelled by city, ZIP codes and priority.
Credit management system with credits in circulation and average balance.
Fig. 05Credit ledger: circulation, balances, transactions.
Table explaining credit cost per game size, from Mini at 0.25 to Exclusive at 3 credits.
Fig. 06Credit tiers by box size.
Forms for voting on a new game via BoardGameGeek search and voting for a new city.
Fig. 07Demand capture: game and city voting.
Game detail modal for Civilization showing credits, availability and BGG metadata.
Fig. 08Game detail with live availability and BGG metadata.

Next step

Have an application that needs building?

Tell me about the workflow that's slowing you down, the systems you need connected, or the application you want to build. We'll work out the right approach.

Book a strategy calledishanleetenorio03@gmail.com