QTCo Direct-to-Garment Case Study

Client
QTCo
Platforms
AWS
Solutions
B2B eCommerce, Web Applications, Integrations / Extensions

QTCo (Queensland T-Shirt Company) are one of Australia’s leading garment printing suppliers. Discover how OSE worked with QTCo to revolutionise their operations through digital operations.

Deliver a one-of-a-kind printing hub for brands all across the world. Absolutely.

QTCo came to OSE looking for a partner capable of designing and building a custom system that would allow QTCo to offer API-driven t-shirt printing at volume.

OSE jumped at the chance to support this fantastic Queensland business and has designed a system using advanced technologies such as GraphQL to deliver lightening quick and super-reliable t-shirt and garment printing for many of the world’s best-known garment marketplaces and brands.

We started with a simple to use Admin interface

One of the key challenges of this product was to produce a simple to use admin interface that the team at QTCo could work with.

With large order volumes streaming through, being able to find order numbers per customer quickly, with minimal fuss was super important to this project outcome.

Our UX team worked with the QTCo team to ensure they were completely happy that the system which would become the central order management tool for their business was designed exactly to their specifications.

The result…a winning formula.

…and matched it with the behind the scenes middleware

If you haven’t heard the term middleware before, it’s basically an industry term for a series of API’s that connect one system to another and move data between those systems.

The middleware for QTCo’s HUB allows vendors from all parts of the world to send their orders to QTCo for printing 24/7, enter a queue for processing, then get printed right here in Brisbane.

This simple concept, however, needed to be flexible enough to handle any number of simultaneous systems from across the world, their data in whatever shape it came in, and process the data without error.

The result…a whole lot of orders coming QTCo’s way managed all from a simple to use Admin interface.

Fundamental Technologies

When it came to setting up the QTCo Hub we needed to select a fundamental technology stack that supported scaling requirements. The first component of this was Laravel, or commonly referred to as PHP Laravel. In this case, we chose Laravel Vapor which is a ground-breaking serverless deployment platform for Laravel which allowed the OSE team to deliver 100% up-time for QTCo under significant server volume levels.

Additionally, we used a combination of GraphQL and VUE to deliver a smart single-page app design for the Admin interface of the QTCo Hub. This service allowed OSE to deliver a lightening quick UI for the internal teams at QTCo, whilst utilising best-of-breed technologies the team could rely on for years to come when it came to retrieving data and displaying it on the front-end of the system.

Order Management

When managing large order volumes, it’s imperative that you have a system that can allow you to amend orders as-needed.

From simple order edits, to incorrect data or stop orders, ensuring QTCo had the power to manage their mission-critical service with complete confidence, not finding themselves in a position where they needed developer support was important to the evaluation of this project.

Using a combination of smart error logging on AWS, front-end management tools and alert systems, OSE has empowered the QTCo team to use order management hub with complete confident 7-days a week.

API-driven Flexibility

When it comes to creating a purpose-built API, ensuring you define the rules clearly for how to interact with that API with enough flexibility so as not to alienate your user base is a must.

With this in mind, the team at QTCo worked closely with OSE to ensure we were creating a flexible API that was understandable by third-parties, and would allow for simple data transformation services and operability was a key project consideration.

Given OSE’s experience in the API space, we crafted an API which was perfectly suited to QTCo’s needs, that the garment printing industry could utilise, that continues to received incredible feedback.