03 — Case study
4Kids
B2B toy ordering, made simple.
An ordering app for a toys distributor - turning a phone-call and PDF-catalogue workflow into a clean mobile experience for retail buyers.
The problem
Retail buyers ordered from the distributor the way they had for years: a PDF catalogue, a phone call, and a WhatsApp message to confirm. It worked, but it leaked. Prices went stale, stock questions bounced back and forth, and repeat orders had to be rebuilt from scratch every time.
The brief wasn't "make an e-commerce app." It was: keep the speed of a phone call, remove the friction around it.
How I approached it
- 01Mapped the existing ordering journey, including the WhatsApp and phone steps nobody had documented
- 02Designed the catalogue around how buyers actually search - by category, and by what they ordered last time
- 03Kept the ordering flow shallow: browse, add, review, confirm
- 04Made stock and pricing visible at the point of decision, not after
The solution
A catalogue that behaves like a buyer's mental model rather than a warehouse index - categories first, reorder shortcuts close to hand, and quantities adjustable without leaving the list.
B2B ordering is repetitive by nature, so the design optimises for the second and fiftieth order, not the first. Familiar items surface fast, and confirming an order takes fewer taps than typing a WhatsApp message.
What I took from it
B2B tools get designed as if the user is discovering the product. They aren't - they know exactly what they want, and they're doing this weekly. Designing for repetition rather than discovery changed almost every screen.