Our work · Case study
RestockRun
A route planner for trading-card collectors. Enter a ZIP code and it sequences the stores near you so you reach each door as close to opening as possible, then tells you when other collectors spot a restock. We built it because we needed it, and 4,800 people signed up in its first two months.
- 4,800+users in the first two months
- 61,000+actions taken on the site in that time
- 100,000+stores across 78 retail chains
- 5 countriesin 4 languages
The problem
RestockRun started with its founder trying to buy trading cards in a market that had gone crazy. Product sold out in minutes, and the morning routine was a research project: which stores near here even sell cards, what time does each one open, which are worth the drive, and in what order. Most of it was Google searching at 5 a.m., and most of it was wrong by the time you got there.
Collectors didn't need another price tracker. They needed someone to do the planning: find the stores, know the hours, put them in the right order, and say when something has actually landed on a shelf.
What we built
A mobile-first web app that turns a ZIP code into a morning's route, and keeps watch on the stores you care about afterwards.
- Say where you areA ZIP code, a street address or your current location, a radius out to 50 miles, and the day: today, tomorrow or up to a week ahead.
- Choose your storesBig retail, dollar stores, bookstores and independent game shops. Warehouse clubs are there if you have a membership. Skip a stop and the planner finds a real alternative.
- Get the routeStores sequenced by opening time and real driving time, with an arrival buffer so you're at the door before it opens, a map, and turn-by-turn directions for each leg.
- Hear about restocksFavorite a store and other collectors' stock reports reach you in the app or by email, along with a reminder the day before a scheduled release.
Knowing what's really out there
The routing was the easy part. The hard part was the data behind it: where the stores are, when they open today in their own time zone, and what's actually on the shelf.
- 1Store locations and hours come from OpenStreetMap, loaded in bulk twice a month for five countries, with Google Places filling gaps only when OpenStreetMap comes up short. That keeps the data fresh and the bills small.
- 2Every store keeps a full week of hours and its time zone, and the app works out today's opening time when you search, so a Saturday plan uses Saturday's hours.
- 3Collectors report what they find, and a fresh in-stock report at a store you follow notifies you within the hour.
- 4For the big chains, the app checks shelf stock per store and per product. Retailers actively block automated traffic, and keeping those checks reliable took more engineering than the routing itself.
Driving times come from OpenStreetMap's routing service and the map is Leaflet, so the core of the product runs with no metered map keys at all.
Under the hood
Five countries, four languages
The United States, Canada, the UK, Germany and Switzerland, each with its own chains, with the whole app in English, Spanish, German and French, down to the turn-by-turn directions and the error messages.
Free to use, with a paid tier
Free with ads, with Booster and Elite tiers through Stripe for more stops, more searches and stock alerts, and a referral program that gives a free month for bringing two friends who plan a route.
Built for more than one game
Landing pages and release calendars for Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Lorcana, Magic, Dragon Ball and One Piece, with admin tools to schedule releases and curate the products worth watching.
Small to run
One DigitalOcean droplet with PostgreSQL alongside, provisioned by Terraform, with nightly backups and a tested restore. The same operational pattern as our other products, so one person can keep all of them running.
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