Vestu: A marketplace for dancewear

The idea for Vestu came from a dance school that saw the same problem repeatedly: dance clothing and costumes could be expensive, yet some pieces were only worn a handful of times. Those items still had value for another dancer, school or production.

Vestu needed to make buying, selling and hiring dancewear straightforward in one mobile marketplace designed around the needs of the dance community.

A general resale marketplace does not understand the additional information and availability rules involved in specialist dancewear. Sellers needed to offer an item for sale or hire, upload clear images and product details, manage stock and fulfil orders from the app.

Hiring introduced greater complexity than a conventional purchase. Availability had to account for minimum hire periods, refundable deposits, turnaround windows, late-return charges and seller-defined holidays when an item could not be booked.

• Create one specialist marketplace for buying, selling and hiring dancewear.
• Make listing an item simple for individual sellers and dance organisations.
• Support image uploads, product details, categories, brands, condition and stock.
• Process marketplace payments and distribute seller funds after the Vestu platform fee.
• Build dependable availability and pricing rules for hired products.
• Give buyers and sellers clear order, sale and delivery visibility in the app.
• Provide the Vestu team with a structured administration system that requires no coding knowledge.

We designed Vestu as a two-sided marketplace rather than a conventional online shop. The same member can discover products, save favourites, buy or hire an item and also become a seller with their own listings, sales and order responsibilities.

Sale and hire journeys share a consistent catalogue and checkout foundation, while hire-specific services calculate valid dates, quantity, deposits, fees and unavailable periods. Permissions keep customer, seller and platform-team actions clearly separated.

The mobile app gives the dance community a focused catalogue that can be filtered by items available to buy or hire. Rich product pages bring together imagery, seller identity, stock, condition, price and the next relevant action.

Sellers can upload images and product information, choose whether an item is for sale or rent and create multiple colour and size variants with an individual quantity for each. Buyers can select quantities across those available variants in one bulk order. Sellers manage their products and sales directly from their profile, while Stripe Connect processes the marketplace transaction, routes the platform fee to Vestu and distributes the remaining funds to the seller.

A Laravel platform coordinates catalogue, orders, hire availability, payments, user roles and operational status. Laravel Nova gives the Vestu team a structured interface for managing the marketplace without needing to work directly with code or the database.

• Dancewear catalogue with buy and hire discovery
• Search, filters, favourites and shopping basket
• Seller-created listings with multiple image uploads
• Colour and size variants with independent stock quantities
• Bulk quantity selection across available variants
• Product categories, brands, condition, quantity and stock
• Sale and hire pricing
• Stripe Connect marketplace payments and seller payouts
• Vestu platform-fee distribution
• Minimum hire periods and selectable booking dates
• Refundable deposits and late-return charges
• Turnaround safety windows around every hire
• Hire holidays and blocked availability
• In-app sales, order, product and delivery management
• Multiple user roles with controlled permissions
• Laravel Nova marketplace administration

The central technical challenge was making hiring feel as simple as buying while enforcing a much richer set of rules. A date that appears available must also satisfy the minimum duration, stock quantity, seller holidays and the protected turnaround time before and after neighbouring bookings.

Marketplace payments required another layer of coordination. The platform needed to track the full order while Stripe Connect handled money movement between the customer, seller and Vestu. Payment state, refunds, deposits, fulfilment and delivery status all needed to remain understandable to the different user types.

Vestu has a purpose-built digital marketplace for extending the useful life of dance clothing. Customers can find specialist items to buy or hire, while sellers and dance schools can turn underused stock into sales or rental income.

The connected app and administration platform give Vestu control over catalogue quality, marketplace fees, users, orders and hire operations, with a technical foundation designed for the additional complexity of rental commerce.