Placemakers
Reimagining the Trade App Experience for 25,000+ PlaceMakers Customers
THE CHALLENGE
PlaceMakers is New Zealand’s largest supplier of building materials and hardware, with thousands of trade customers depending on digital tools to manage orders, quotes, and accounts.
Their existing Trade App had outgrown its original scope. Performance and user experience issues were mounting, while customer expectations had shifted toward faster, more seamless digital experiences. PlaceMakers needed a redesigned mobile app—one that was built around real trade customer workflows and could scale with the business.
But with 25,000+ active users, the stakes were high. The new experience had to be deeply intuitive, visually polished, and aligned with the realities of day-to-day life on the job site.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Apolinar was engaged to lead the strategy, user experience, and interface design for the new Trade App. Working closely with PlaceMakers’ digital and customer experience teams, we had the opportunity to:
Deeply understand the unique needs of tradies, reps, and account managers
Design a streamlined mobile interface optimised for speed, clarity, and minimal friction
Develop a clear product vision and experience strategy to guide internal delivery teams
COMPOSABLE UI DESIGN SYSTEM
IN-PERSON USER TESTING RECORDED VIA LOOKBACK
What We Did
WORKSHOPS | Stakeholder workshops and customer interviews to map current pain points and workflows |
UX STRATEGY | A complete UX strategy grounded in real user needs and business priorities |
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE | Information architecture and user flows for quoting, ordering, product search, and account management |
UI DESIGN SYSTEM | High-fidelity UI design system aligned with the PlaceMakers brand and modern mobile design standards |
FIGMA PROTOTYPE | Clickable Figma prototype for validation with customers and internal teams |
DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS | Design specifications to support handover to in-house development and QA teams |
Deliverables
Discovery workshops and user research
UX strategy and product definition
Mobile-first UI design system
Prototypes and user flows
Developer-ready design specifications in Figma
The Results
Downloads*
*In the first 54 days of launching
Processed orders*
In revenue*
BEFORE | AFTER |
|---|---|
Outdated, inconsistent app experience | Modern UI system designed for scale and clarity |
Internal assumptions about workflows | Real customer insights driving every screen |
Slow task completion on mobile | Streamlined interactions optimised for tradies |
Design and dev misalignment | Clear design system + specifications for developers |
CLIENT FEEDBACK
“Apolinar has created a powerful powerful but simple experience for builders to engage with our products..”
— Ritesh Patel | General Manager Digital and Transformation, Fletcher Building
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Apolinar helps product teams move from internal assumptions to customer-validated designs. Whether you’re building from scratch or redesigning at scale—we’ll help you create an experience that performs.