Shop Suki

The Problem

Jennica Chiang, CEO of Shop Suki, had a problem. Her mobile app worked, but the third-party e-commerce app builder behind it didn’t respond.

Bug fixes took weeks. Customization was impossible. Users complained. Ratings dropped to ~3.x stars on both iOS and Android.

Jennica decided to rebuild the app from scratch. She needed a mobile lead who could ship fast without letting quality slip.

Previous 3rd Party Service

✗ Change requests took weeks to process
✗ Customization was next to impossible
✗ Bugs piled up with no clear timeline for fixes
✗ App ratings stuck at ~3.x stars
✗ Zero responsiveness from the service team

What We Delivered

✓ Daily standups and pair programming with 3 developers
✓ Fast iteration: days to ship fixes, not weeks
✓ Full customization control via native Flutter
✓ Quality code with proper architecture from the start
✓ Ratings jumped to 4.4 (Android) and 4.7 (iOS)

How did we rebuild this fast without breaking things?

I led a team of 3 developers to rebuild the app from scratch. We worked side-by-side—I was coding alongside them, not just directing from above.

How we worked:

Daily standups: Stay aligned on priorities and blockers
Pair programming: I developed with the team, showing patterns in real-time
Mentorship: 1-2 sessions per month with casual milestone check-ins
Code reviews: Every PR reviewed to catch inconsistencies early

Speed doesn’t mean cutting corners. It means removing waste, having clear priorities, and making decisions fast.

The Technical Wins

We tackled two hard problems while rebuilding:

Two Hard Problems Solved

Cart State Management

CHALLENGE

Syncing cart state across all app pages in real-time, managing two cart types (signed-out local vs. signed-in Shopify-synced), and handling memory constraints on low-end Android devices

SOLUTION

Event-driven architecture with aggressive caching, memory management, and BLoC/Cubit state patterns

Shopify Mobile Integration

CHALLENGE

Shopify plugins assume browsers and HTML—we needed native mobile APIs. Plus integrating Boost Commerce (a Shopify plugin) with zero mobile support

SOLUTION

Rebuilt Shopify functionality as mobile APIs. Reverse-engineered Boost Commerce by inspecting network requests in browser DevTools

ℹ️ WANT THE TECHNICAL DEEP-DIVE?

Read Boost Commerce reverse engineering article on how we integrated undocumented APIs.

The Outcome

Metric	Before	After
Android Rating	~3.x stars	4.4 stars
iOS Rating	~3.x stars	4.7 stars
Response Time	Weeks for fixes	Days for shipping
Customization	Impossible	Full control

That jump in ratings isn’t just code quality. It’s responsiveness. It’s the team actually fixing bugs instead of ignoring them. It’s features shipping instead of getting stuck in backlog limbo.

So how did we actually pull this off?

Speed without quality is chaos. Your code ships fast but breaks constantly. Users complain. Ratings tank.

Quality without speed misses the market. You build beautifully but take six months. By then, users have moved to a competitor.

We needed both. Here’s how we did it:

1. Leading hands-on: I wasn’t directing from above—I was in the code with the team. This kept decisions consistent and patterns clear.

2. Testing on real devices: Important in the Philippines where low-end Android devices are common. Emulators lie about memory constraints and performance. We tested on actual budget phones users would have.

3. Making trade-offs consciously: The Boost Commerce reverse engineering is hacky, not elegant. But it works and ships. We chose shipping over perfection—with fallbacks so we wouldn’t break if it changed.

4. Clarity on architecture: Everyone understood why we chose BLoC/Cubit, why caching was critical, why memory management mattered. When you understand the “why,” you make better decisions independently.

Shop Suki Mobile App

Download the app to see the result of rebuilding from scratch with speed and quality.

🤖 Android App ⭐ 4.4 📱 iOS App ⭐ 4.7