Wanamakers

Wanamaker’s entered online thoroughbred bidding — a market where credibility with breeders, buyers, and bloodstock experts is non-negotiable. Magnet designed and engineered a custom platform on Laravel, Nuxt, and Stripe with websocket bidding stress-tested for ~10,000 concurrent bidders within 100ms. Six-month build; first online auction June 2020.

Discovery spanned international auction competitors and parallel UX tracks for buyers, sellers, and equine experts. Credibility is the product. We defined a refined mid-century visual language, then built catalog views, rich horse detail pages, and inline bidding modals calibrated for a discerning audience — not a generic marketplace skin.

The platform is a high-stakes digital experience: filters, grid/list/map modes, branded transactional email, and bidding flows that feel as deliberate as the paddock. Offers and packaging clarified how lots, fees, and participation are presented so first-time online bidders are not guessing.

Engineering delivered Laravel services, Nuxt frontend, Stripe payments, and websocket infrastructure for near-real-time bid updates. Load testing validated ~10,000 active bidders within 100ms. Speed here is trust — the same performance posture as building for instant software.

Transactional and post-sale communication kept participants informed without chaos. Lifecycle email patterns covered confirmations, outbid notices, and follow-up so the auction house stayed present after the hammer.

Six-month build; inaugural online auction June 2020. The platform established momentum Wanamaker’s carried into subsequent sales — online bidding without sacrificing the credibility the house was built on.