Last year we wrote about building the RoadTrip mobile app — a mobile showroom that puts brands’ products in front of retail buyers without the cost and rigidity of a trade show. In June, Curia acquired the RoadTrip brand and came to QuidVista with a much bigger ask: build a whole new platform to run RoadTrip end to end, make it work seamlessly with the app we had already delivered, and have it live in time for the first RoadTrip on 1st September.
We hit the date.
The Brief
An acquisition changes everything around a product. The RoadTrip app was already in the hands of users, and the experience it offered was a big part of what made the brand worth buying. But a mobile app on its own is only the front of the shop. Curia needed the operational platform behind it — the systems to run RoadTrip events, manage brands and buyers, and turn the app into a business they could operate and grow.
That came with two hard constraints:
- The existing mobile app had to keep working. We were not starting from a blank page. The new platform had to slot in behind an app that was already live, without forcing users through a disruptive rebuild or breaking the experience they knew.
- The first RoadTrip was fixed for 1st September. Brands, buyers and logistics were being committed to that date. The platform had to be ready, tested and in use before then — roughly ten weeks from the start of the engagement.
Designing Around What Already Existed
Because we built the original app, we understood its structure, its data model and its assumptions in detail. That was a real advantage. Rather than treating the app as a black box to integrate with, we designed the new platform’s APIs around how the app already worked, and evolved them where the business needed more — so the app could be upgraded incrementally rather than rewritten.
It also meant we could make sensible calls quickly. Where the original app had been built with a lighter backend in mind, we knew exactly which parts needed to move to the new platform first, and which could follow once the first event was safely delivered.
What We Built
A new core platform and API A modern backend to become the single source of truth for RoadTrip — brands, products, buyers, events and meetings — exposed through APIs that serve both the existing mobile app and the new web tools.
Brand and product management The tools brands need to get set up, manage their product listings, and prepare for each RoadTrip, without relying on the RoadTrip team to do it for them.
Buyer management Onboarding and profiles for retail buyers, so the right products and the right brands are put in front of the right people.
Event and RoadTrip operations The operational heart of the platform: planning each RoadTrip, managing who is attending, and coordinating the meetings between brands and buyers that are the whole point of the experience.
Administration and reporting A back office for Curia’s team to run the business day to day — managing users, monitoring activity, and seeing what is happening across each RoadTrip.
Delivering to a Fixed Date
A fixed launch date with real people and real logistics behind it is a different kind of deadline. There is no “we’ll push it a fortnight”. We approached it the way we approach any time-critical delivery:
- Ruthless prioritisation. We worked with Curia to separate what had to be live for 1st September from what could follow, and protected that core scope throughout.
- Building in small, shippable increments. Working software went in front of the Curia team early and often, so feedback shaped the platform while there was still time to act on it.
- Reusing what was proven. Building on our knowledge of the existing app avoided weeks of discovery and kept the risk of breaking it low.
- Launch readiness as a deliverable. Testing, data migration and operational run-throughs were planned in from the start, not squeezed in at the end.
The first RoadTrip went ahead on 1st September, running on the new platform.
What Comes Next
With the foundations in place and the first event behind us, the platform is ready to grow with Curia’s plans for RoadTrip — more events, more brands, more buyers, and the features that become possible once everything sits on a single, well-designed platform.
Projects like this — an existing product, a change of ownership, a hard deadline and no room for a big-bang rewrite — are exactly where an experienced team earns its keep. If you are facing something similar, get in touch.