[Case study]

SimplSurf

SaaS-enabled marketplace

Automated a pen-and-paper surfboard consignment process in two weeks.

[Stack]

Webflow, Zapier, Airtable, Stripe, Mailchimp, Finsweet CMS, Make (Integromat), Typeform, Twilio

[Duration]

2 weeks

[What it is]

Automated surfboard consignment

SimplSurf was a Berkeley, California surf startup that helped surf shops sell used boards on consignment. In two weeks, DreamLabs built the platform behind those used-board sales: an online intake form for board owners, an Airtable dashboard where shop managers ran their consignment pipeline, and Webflow board listings with Stripe checkout and Klarna Buy Now, Pay Later financing. Together they turned a pen-and-paper consignment process into one automated flow, from a board being submitted to the sale confirmation reaching the shop and the buyer.

The problem

SimplSurf rented private surfboard lockers at California breaks, from Ocean Beach in San Francisco to Ocean Beach in San Diego, and was building a used-board marketplace with surf shops. For the shops, consignment ran on pen and paper, and board owners could be left waiting for a check in the mail after their board sold. SimplSurf’s own pitch to retailers promised to turn board consignment “from a headache to passive income.”

The brief was to automate that pen-and-paper process for shop owners and let buyers pay online, with financing.

[How it works]

From board intake to sale confirmation

The platform connected a handful of no-code tools so that each step of a consignment fed the next one automatically.

Board intake

Board owners submitted boards for review through a Typeform embedded in the Webflow site
Each submission landed in Airtable, ready for the shop to review

Shop-manager dashboard

An Airtable Interface where surf shop managers tracked their consignment pipeline, accepted new boards, confirmed boards were ready to sell and viewed sale analytics
Boards sorted into views such as Available, Interested, Received and Sold, with the shop’s side of a sale laid out in three steps that end with verifying the board purchase

Listings and checkout

Board listings generated in the Webflow CMS straight from Airtable, through Make (Integromat) and its API connection
A unique Stripe Payment Link on every listing, so buyers could pay online or use Klarna’s Buy Now, Pay Later financing

Sale confirmations

When a board sold, confirmation details went to both the surf shop and the buyer: SMS through Twilio and email through Gmail, automated in Zapier

The simpl.surf used-board storefront in Webflow, layered over the Make scenario and the Airtable Interface shop managers used to run consignment — The storefront, with the Make automation and the shop-manager dashboard behind it.

Stack

Webflow ran the public site and the board listings. Typeform handled intake, Airtable held the boards and the shop dashboard, Make (Integromat) generated the listings, Stripe took payments, and Twilio and Zapier sent the confirmations. Mailchimp and Finsweet CMS round out the stack.

This was a no-code build, not one of our Flutter apps: connecting existing tools automated the process in two weeks. If a marketplace like this outgrows its automations, our guides to no-code migration and Webflow migration cover moving it to code you own.

Timeline

Two weeks for the whole build: intake, the shop dashboard, listings with checkout, and sale confirmations.

Outcome

The build replaced pen and paper with one automated flow, and SimplSurf pitched its used-board platform to surf retailers. Its partner page offered shops “a full-service platform to manage and grow your used-board sales,” with a central admin dashboard to track the entire used-board pipeline at the shop, listings built from details the board owner provides, and checkout financing.

In February 2022 the Board Retailers Association published SimplSurf’s pitch to surf retailers, listed SimplSurf as a BRA Supporting Vendor Partner and offered the tool to BRA Retail Members for free.