Trooper: shopping that helps

Business context

Trooper is a Belgian startup founded in 2016 that connects online stores with non-profit organisations, enabling users to support selected causes through their everyday shopping. At launch, it had only a prototype website built in WordPress, covering five organisations – the concept was strong, but it lacked the professional technological foundation and experience needed to scale.

In 2020, the business goal was to move from the prototype stage to a working platform capable of supporting the rapid growth in partners and users. The key was to combine the convenience of online shopping with a transparent mechanism for directing funds to social causes.

The collaboration was intended to demonstrate that it is possible to build an innovative, scalable platform for a mission-driven startup – one that provides a simple path for supporting organisations and an attractive sales channel for e-commerce.

Challenge

The existing solution made it difficult to manage and maintain the platform. Performance and scalability were limited, which slowed the development of the concept and the acquisition of new partners and organisations.

The biggest challenge was to create a scalable platform that would make it easy to add more associations and stores while also supporting the shopping journey in such a way that part of the transaction value would go to selected organisations. Stable operation under a growing volume of users and transactions was essential.

An additional requirement was the rapid delivery of the first version of the solution so that the business assumptions could be validated as quickly as possible and further development could be planned – all within the limited budget typical of an early-stage startup.

Solution

In response, an application was developed that became a growth tool for the socially engaged platform. Despite budget limitations, the first working version was deployed in three weeks, enabling Trooper to quickly verify the scalability of the model and plan the product roadmap.

The solution connected online shoppers, e-commerce stores and non-profit organisations into one mutually beneficial ecosystem. Stores gained an additional sales channel, users gained an effortless way to support their favourite initiatives, and Trooper gained the foundation for systematically expanding its partner network.

The architecture and processes were designed to support the easy onboarding of new entities and the reliable handling of transactions generating donations. This foundation enabled continuous product development and the dynamic scaling of cooperation.