USED Creative · Fractional operations for an early-stage circular marketplace
Helping buyers work out how to get their purchase home, and getting an AI listing tool ready for a trade show.
What they asked for
A marketplace for surplus film and theatre sets and props, run by two founders who were "both very time-poor, with family responsibilities alongside building the business". They wanted someone to hold the operational side together, about a day a week, while they focused on growing it.
What was actually going on
The problem wasn't the marketplace or the traffic. It was that nobody could work out how they'd get the item home. There was no shipping at checkout and no location on the product page, and a line promising "shipping calculated at checkout" wasn't true. 3,000 visitors had converted nobody, and £1,500 of ads had brought 900 clicks and no sales.
What we built
A clear buying journey, agreed with the founders line by line, and a developer I found and managed to a trade-show deadline. Collection in person, clear delivery options, and rewritten guides for buyers and sellers, all tested with real orders. For their AI listing tool, I turned a £17,000 upfront quote into a £1,500 test phase with a clear go or no-go decision at the end, so they only committed more once it was proven to work.
What changed
Buyers could finally see how to get their purchase home. The listing tool went from an early version that lost people's work to a live product publishing straight to the marketplace, in time for the trade show.