Custom Listing Software

Context

Košík's online catalog changes every day - new SKUs, delistings, promotions, seasonal assortment. Product listing is the cornerstone of a functional shop: if the shelf is wrong, search is wrong, and customers notice immediately. In e-grocery it is also legally heavy - allergens, country of origin, processing methods that differ by category, best-before dates, and more.

Problem

Before this work, listing was handled by a team of specialists exchanging countless Google Sheets with suppliers - many columns, many handoffs, no single source of truth. It worked at small scale but was not scalable as assortment and supplier count grew. Everyone knew the process had to change.

My role

I mapped the end-to-end listing process, drove the build-vs-buy decision with leadership, ran vendor selection, and owned product through implementation with the chosen third-party partner.

Constraints

• Regulatory and category rules: Different product types need different fields surfaced; the tool had to enforce what matters without drowning users in columns.
• Two audiences: Internal merchandising teams and external suppliers - each should see only what they need.
• Daily catalog churn: Anything that felt like "another spreadsheet" would be rejected on the floor.
• Partner delivery: Custom software through a vendor, not in-house - clear specs and acceptance criteria or nothing ships.

What I did

• Mapped the full listing workflow from supplier intake to live shelf.
• Led the decision to outsource rather than build listing internally, with a clear rationale on speed, cost, and domain fit.
• Ran selection and contracting with the third-party vendor.
• Owned product requirements and rollout: supplier portal, drag-and-drop data upload, automatic field mapping, and role-based views for internal and external users.
• Kept partner milestones tied to what merchandising and ops could actually run in production.

Key decisions

• Buy, not build: After process mapping, internal development was the wrong bet - a specialized partner could ship faster with grocery-specific constraints baked in.
• Supplier self-serve: Move data entry and correction to suppliers where possible, with mapping automation instead of manual column matching.
• Show only what is necessary: Different screens for internal vs external users - fewer columns, fewer errors, less back-and-forth.

Result

A robust customized listing platform aligned with online grocery reality. Supplier communication time dropped by roughly 40%. The specialist team could focus on exceptions and quality instead of chasing cells in shared spreadsheets.

What this shows

Taking a tedious, regulation-heavy operational process and turning it into a product system both suppliers and internal teams would actually use - including the unglamorous work of vendor selection and partner delivery, not just writing requirements.