Golden Route Shipping

Golden Route Shipping is a group buying and container import app built for a Botswana business that imports goods from an overseas factory. Members pool orders into a shared shipping container; once enough units are committed to fill it, the organiser closes the group and places the order. The app replaces paper cost sheets and manual per member tracking with a shared, priced view of how close each group is to shipping.

The web client is server-authoritative: state persists in Postgres through a Go backend, with real-time group and support chat over a Redis-backed websocket. The work is still in progress. The app reads and writes one shared state document rather than per-resource endpoints, and the React Native mobile app is planned but not started.

The App

Screens

Golden Route sign-in card on a dark background, with an account picker and Member or Organiser role buttons — The entry point: pick a role, member or organiser, before landing in the app.

Member home page with a dark hero banner reading Join a container, share the freight, stats for open groups, units committed and members, and a product card with a fill progress bar — The member home page: open groups to join, each showing how close it is to the minimum order.

The same member home page on a phone-sized screen, with a bottom navigation bar for Groups, Chats, Orders and Track — The member view on a phone, with bottom-tab navigation.

A 3-door wardrobe product page with photos, a description, and a progress bar reading 8 of 16 units committed, 50 percent of minimum order — A product page a member can share: photos, description and how close the group is to ordering.

The same wardrobe product page on a phone, with a sticky Sign in to join this group button at the bottom — The product page on a phone, with the join action pinned to the bottom.

Organiser load planner screen showing a 40 foot container 39 percent utilised, with separate gauges for cargo volume and payload weight — The organiser's load planner: how full a container is by volume and by weight, and which one is the binding limit.

Organiser containers screen listing several shipping containers by reference number, each with a fill bar, one at 29 percent full carrying two consolidated groups — The organiser's container list, for consolidating several groups into one box before it ships.

1. Picking a role and joining a group

One app carries both views, switched from the top bar: the member view for people joining a group, the organiser view for the person running it. A member browses open groups on the home page and sees how close each one is to its minimum order before joining.

2. A group's product page

Each product page shows photos, a description and a live cost breakdown for the quantity and packaging a member picks. The page is shareable, so a member can send it to someone else to bring into the group.

3. Group chat and order tracking

Members follow their order status and read and post in a group chat, delivered over a websocket with presence, typing indicators and read receipts. A separate support thread reaches the organiser directly.

4. Container load planning

The organiser's load planner tracks a container's fill by both cargo volume and payload weight, so it is clear which of the two limits binds before the container is booked to ship.

5. Consolidating containers

A container list shows every shipping container by reference number and fill percentage, so the organiser can consolidate more than one group's orders into a single container before it ships.

6. Reconciliation and customer records

A per-group reconciliation sheet is the digital equivalent of the business's paper cost sheets: a ledger with expandable per member installment history and a CSV export. A customer list aggregates every member's order history across all groups.