Merchant: multilingual product research and supplier comparison platform

Merchant is a multilingual product research platform that searches ten sources, compares supplier listings, and ranks products by cost, estimated margin, and demand signals. Sellers can inspect sources in English, Urdu, or Arabic.

Merchant product hunt showing source diagnostics for a pet gadgets search

Project overview

Project
Merchant
Product type
Independent SaaS product
Industry
E-commerce research
Timeline
Production-build demo
Build model
Independent product build
Availability
Production-build demo
Services
Product engineering · Research workflow design · UI/UX design · DevOps

From business problem to measurable outcome.

  1. Problem01

    What held the business back

    A seller researching a new niche may check TikTok, Amazon, Google, Reddit and supplier sites in separate tabs. It takes time to compare the products, and a promising trend can look less attractive once the supplier price and minimum order are known.

  2. Solution02

    How the product works

    The seller enters a niche and can set a maximum retail price. Merchant runs six focused Google searches alongside Amazon, TikTok Shop, Reddit and YouTube. It removes duplicate finds and keeps discussion posts as context rather than listing them as products.

  3. Product outcome03

    What the demo demonstrates

    In the documented demo, a seller enters one niche and receives a ranked list with supplier cost, estimated margin and minimum order beside each product.

What was not working.

A seller researching a new niche may check TikTok, Amazon, Google, Reddit and supplier sites in separate tabs. It takes time to compare the products, and a promising trend can look less attractive once the supplier price and minimum order are known.

Some tools label a product a winner without showing where the claim came from. Merchant was built for sellers who want to see the source, the risk, the likely margin and the supplier offer before deciding what to test. It also gives Urdu and Arabic readers a complete right-to-left interface.

Goals

  • Turn a niche search into a short list of products worth testing.
  • Show supplier prices, estimated margins and minimum orders alongside each recommendation.
  • Show failed sources, risk warnings and the numbers behind every score.
  • Make the full research flow usable in English, Urdu and Arabic.

What the product delivers

The seller enters a niche and can set a maximum retail price. Merchant runs six focused Google searches alongside Amazon, TikTok Shop, Reddit and YouTube. It removes duplicate finds and keeps discussion posts as context rather than listing them as products.

It warns about fragile, restricted and branded products, then searches Alibaba and AliExpress for suppliers of the strongest candidates. Offers are checked as they arrive, so the seller can start reviewing results before the whole hunt finishes.

The final list shows the retail price, supplier cost, estimated margin, minimum order and a score broken into seven parts. Prices and rankings are calculated in TypeScript. Gemini helps explain the findings, but the figures come from the stored search data and the interface marks fallback answers clearly.

Progress is saved throughout a hunt, including when a source is blocked. Sellers can ask follow-up questions about that hunt, export the results as CSV or JSON, and return to previous searches. The interface works in English, Urdu and Arabic.

Features delivered

  • Ten-source product search
  • Risk warnings
  • Supplier matching
  • Seven-part score breakdown
  • Live hunt progress
  • Follow-up questions about each hunt
  • CSV and JSON export
  • English, Urdu and Arabic
  • Plans and quota controls
  • Admin console

Product scope

  • Product architecture
  • Frontend development
  • Backend development
  • Search integration
  • UI/UX design
  • DevOps

What it is built with.

Web
Next.js 16TypeScript
API & contracts
NestJS 12ZodRESTSSE
Data
Prisma 7PostgreSQL
Search & explanations
Google GeminiDecodo scraping
Delivery
DockerPlaywrightVitest

Inside the product

Screens captured from a demo run of the production build.
  • Merchant ranked product shortlist with supplier price, margin and minimum order
    The shortlist shows cost, margin and minimum order next to each product.
  • Merchant live hunt showing discovery and supplier matching progress
    Each research stage reports progress as the hunt runs.
  • Merchant product score breakdown with visible evidence and weighted components
    Open a product to see how its score was calculated.
  • Merchant Arabic product results with a right-to-left interface
    The same product search in Arabic, with a right-to-left layout.

What actually changed.

These are capabilities shown in the documented production-build demo, not claims about public adoption.

  • In the documented demo, a seller enters one niche and receives a ranked list with supplier cost, estimated margin and minimum order beside each product.
  • The sample hunt checked ten sources and ran twenty supplier searches. One source hit a robot check; Merchant marked it and finished the hunt.
  • The same workflow is available in English, Urdu and Arabic, with right-to-left layouts for Urdu and Arabic.

What made the project work

  • 01

    Putting supplier cost next to each product saves sellers another round of searching.

  • 02

    Showing the score and source status helps a seller decide whether a recommendation is worth testing.

  • 03

    Saving each step before sending a progress update lets someone return to an unfinished hunt.

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Engineering & AI R&D

This is internal and academic engineering work. Each study includes its full technical report.

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