A marketplace for shelf space. And a website that sells it.

Spreat turns retail shelf space into a marketplace. Brands place their products in a store, the store sells them at its own till and earns a commission on every sale. The goods remain the brand's property until they are sold; settlement and receipts run automatically. The model takes two sentences to explain, but only if someone explains it in two sentences.

The old website did not. It was built with Webflow, in English, and greeted visitors with “We do marketplace for physical stores”. German retailers arriving through a referral did not understand what was in it for them. Alongside it sat a landing page for the brand pool on a site builder and the brand pool itself as its own application, each piece in a different design. Anyone who already knew Spreat found information there. Anyone who did not found no way in. And anyone on the team who wanted to change something needed someone who knew Webflow.

The first job was not design work. Spreat had three audiences with three different questions: the owner-run store with free space that does not want to tie up capital; the brand that wants into physical retail without building a field sales force; and partners such as till manufacturers and wholesalers who want to integrate. The core is the store, and a specific one: its own floor, its own till, an appetite for assortment, little time for buying and bookkeeping.

The whole site follows from that profile. The homepage addresses the store and shows in three seconds what happens: a shelf fills with brands without the retailer buying stock. Brands and partners get their own entrances so the homepage does not have to convince three groups at once. And the order of the arguments follows the objections the founders knew from dozens of conversations: risk, effort, settlement, till. Not technology first, but what a retailer wants to know before investing time.

The website: three paths for stores, brands and partners, each with prices, frequently asked questions and the right next step, for stores directly as an appointment in the sales team's calendar. Prices are published openly, as a table and as a calculator for both sides. Add stories from real shops, articles on retail, twelve use cases, a glossary and an about page that opens with retail figures rather than the team. Printed QR codes lead to the site through short links so campaigns can be attributed.

The editorial backend: an admin of its own on the same domain where the team writes stories and previews them before publishing, maintains testimonials and client logos, edits the FAQ per audience, sets the announcement bar at the top of the site, uploads images and reviews inquiries and appointment bookings. One button publishes: it triggers the build and reports when the change is live. Deleted items go to a bin, not into the void. No third-party CMS, no licence, no developer for a new story.

Under the surface: Next.js with statically prerendered pages, locally hosted type, a strict content security header, analytics only after consent, server-side lead capture for the ad campaigns and an accessibility statement. The site runs in German, English and French because brands and partners also enquire from abroad.

The homepage is a place of trust, not a software showcase. In mid-August the question was whether the site shows the software Spreat has built or the opportunity it opens up for a shop. The answer was the opportunity. The technical depth, till integration, API, integrations, got its own subpage for retail chains. A retailer who wants to make better use of the floor should feel that someone here likes retail, not that they are buying software.

The second decision was a colour. The green from the pitch deck sits at 2.8 to 1 on white and therefore fails the contrast requirement as a text colour. Instead of giving it up or ignoring the rule, we made it a surface colour: white type on green buttons, green marks only where they carry no meaning. The brand stays recognisable, and the site passes the check.

The inquiries count everything that comes in through the website: contact form and appointment booking, compared with website inquiries before the relaunch. The figure does not separate the share driven by the ad campaigns that started with the launch from visitors who found Spreat organically. What it shows: the site now explains what it did not explain before, and retailers get in touch through it.

The second figure is not a result but an effort that has gone away: everything the team used to change through Webflow, or not at all, it now maintains itself. The third is the time in which all of this came into being, with content from the company and decisions in weekly sessions with the founders.