A custom retail app that brings together product catalogue, checkout, loyalty and in-store mode. For brands, retailers and omnichannel players who want more than a standard Shopify app, and who want to bind their catalogue, CRM and POS into a single customer experience.
Your customer picks up their phone in the shop, on the sofa, on the train, and expects an experience that knows their account, wishlist and order history. A retail app has to be fast, work offline where needed, and bring your catalogue, payments and loyalty mechanics together in an interface that reflects your brand. A mobile website scales well for browsing, but the moments when a customer truly gets value from their phone, such as a push notification for a personal offer, a barcode scan in store, or a loyalty stamp that appears automatically, cannot be delivered by a browser.
We build custom retail apps for situations where a standard Shopify or Magento app is too limiting. Think of your own brand experience, multi-system integration (PIM, commerce, CRM and POS), multi-tenant franchises, AR features or a loyalty programme with its own mechanics. For pure commodity shops a platform app may well be enough, and we'll tell you honestly when that is the case.
Our role starts with untangling your landscape: which systems are already production-ready, which need replacing or rethinking, and which flows deserve priority in a first app release. From there we build in sprints, deliver a production app on the App Store and Google Play, and, if you wish, remain responsible for further development, store compliance and OS updates.
We work from Amsterdam, with clients across the Netherlands and regularly beyond. The type of retail organisation doesn't matter to us: a D2C brand launching its first app, a chain wanting to bring hundreds of branches onto one codebase, or a loyalty provider looking to modernise its programme. What matters is whether a serious mobile channel needs to be established and whether the existing landscape supports that or stands in the way.
Retail is not a monolith. A D2C brand setting up its first mobile channel has different priorities from a franchise chain that needs a hundred branches on one app. Nine profiles we work with are listed here. If you recognise yourself, our approach will probably suit you well.
For broad chains such as HEMA, Action or Albert Heijn, the value of the app lies in market context: regional offers, stock status per store, and a digital stamp card that works in every branch. The individual customer relationship is broad but less deep.
In fashion, the value lies in presentation: product photography, AR fitting, a look and feel that suits the collection. It is almost always tied to a PIM and to textile software for stock, sizes and seasons.
D2C brands don't want to depend on marketplaces or retailers, so they build their own mobile channel. Push notifications for drops, a wishlist that drives conversion, and a loyalty mechanic that pushes churn down.
For specialist retail, an app only works when it does more than display a catalogue. Think stock checks, reservations, club membership, or in-depth product content. The app becomes part of the specialist positioning.
For loyalty providers, the app is the loyalty product. Stamp cards, partner acceptance, mechanics for earning and redeeming points, and integrations with participating retailers. The app is the heart, not an add-on.
Multi-tenant under one brand name: a shared brand experience, but each franchise has its own stock, its own offers and its own reports. The app must scale to dozens or hundreds of outlets without every outlet requiring its own release.
B2B retail (cash-and-carry, wholesale with trade customers) has its own requirements: customer-specific pricing, invoice flows alongside direct payment, repeat orders and account roles. The app should above all support fast reordering.
For marketplaces where several sellers supply through a single platform. The app must handle seller onboarding, commissions, ratings per seller and consolidated checkout, which is fundamentally different from a single-brand app.
For retailers without a physical store, the app is often the main channel. No in-store mode is needed, but a deep investment in product discovery, social features, content and retention is. The app carries the entire customer relationship.
Which format fits depends on your brand, the number of channels and how deeply the app must integrate with your back-end systems. In the first conversation we advise which variant makes sense.
A mobile app for your brand built on top of an existing commerce platform: commercetools, Saleor, Shopify Hydrogen or Magento. Native look and feel, push notifications, account, wishlist and checkout with iDEAL, Klarna and Apple/Google Pay. Suited to D2C and fashion brands that currently rely on the webshop.
An app that works online and in store: barcode scanning for product information, click & collect, an in-store mode with regional offers, and a digital loyalty stamp card in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. PIM integration with Akeneo or Pimcore, CRM integration with Salesforce, HubSpot or Klaviyo, and POS integration with Lightspeed or Shopify POS for the store staff.
A mission-critical retail app for franchise organisations, chains or international rollouts: one codebase, multiple franchise owners, regional variants and language versions. Or an AI-augmented brand app with visual search, personalised recommendations and AR product preview for clothing or furniture. Deep integration with your own data platform and analytics stack.
A production-ready retail app in the App Store and Play Store, plus everything around it to manage and develop it yourself.
We almost always build cross-platform with React Native or Flutter. We only go native when performance requirements demand it, for example for AR product previews or high-fidelity visual search. For the vast majority of retail apps, cross-platform is the right choice: one codebase, the same feature set on iOS and Android, and lower maintenance costs.
A Shopify or Magento app is perfectly fine for commodity retail. We build bespoke when a platform app genuinely gets in the way of your brand or operations. Here are four patterns where we help clients, so if you recognise one, we'd be happy to talk further.
The Shopify Mobile App or a Tapcart template does the job, but your brand deserves its own interface: its own interactions, typography and pace. A mid-range or luxury brand stands or falls on details that a platform app simply does not allow.
You have Akeneo for product data, commercetools for commerce, Klaviyo for CRM, Lightspeed in store, and a loyalty tool alongside. No single platform app handles that mix smoothly. A bespoke app creates one source of truth for the customer.
One app for your brand, but beneath the surface separate tenant environments per franchise owner or region. Their own stock, their own promotions, their own reports, with a shared brand experience.
AR product previews to try on clothing or place a sofa in your room. Visual search to find products from a photo. AI recommendations based on your own data. These features are not part of a platform app and must sit deep in the app architecture to perform well.
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →For retail apps we work with a fixed set of frameworks and platforms. We don't take dogmatic positions; we weigh what suits each project. But we stick to a stack that has proven itself in production. Here is what we typically use and why.
For almost every retail app we choose cross-platform: one codebase for iOS and Android, the same feature set in both stores, and lower maintenance costs over the lifetime of the app. React Native if your team already runs a React stack or is at home in JavaScript; Flutter if you prefer a more self-contained ecosystem. We only go native (Swift, Kotlin) where performance requirements demand it, such as high-fidelity AR rendering, complex gesture interactions or platform-specific features beyond the standard offering.
For the commerce layer we opt for headless: commercetools, Saleor, Shopify Hydrogen or Magento (in headless mode) serve the app via API. The advantage is that the mobile experience is fully independent of a prescribed web front end, so the app can keep its own pace. For product data we connect Akeneo, Pimcore or Salsify as PIM, so the catalogue, media files, variants and attributes come from a single source and language and regional variants follow automatically.
For authentication we work with Auth0, AWS Cognito, Firebase Auth or a custom JWT layer, depending on what you already have in place and which flows you need (social login, biometric login, guest checkout). Push notifications via Firebase Cloud Messaging or OneSignal, with a central deal engine that can filter by region, segment or recent purchase behaviour. Analytics via Mixpanel, Amplitude or Firebase Analytics, with funnels for checkout, retention and loyalty engagement from day one.
We listen to your brand, your channels and your customers. Which systems are already in use: commerce, PIM, CRM, POS, loyalty? Which flows must be in the app? Which features are needed on day one, and which can wait?
Workshops with your team, interviews with customers and, where relevant, store staff, plus the first screen flow for checkout, account, loyalty and in-store mode. At the same time, the technical architecture: cross-platform with React Native or Flutter, a headless commerce layer, authentication, push and analytics.
Every two weeks a working build that you and your team can test on real devices. We start with the happy path (product listing, product detail, basket, checkout) and then build features such as wishlist, loyalty, barcode scanning and in-store mode step by step.
App Store Connect and Google Play Console, store listings, screenshots, privacy statement. A soft launch for a group of test customers, followed by a full rollout with a targeted push campaign. After that, ongoing management for OS updates, store compliance and further development.
A retail app touches payment data, personal data, recommendation algorithms and, increasingly, accessibility requirements. We build these in from the start rather than bolting them on afterwards. Here are four legal frameworks every retail app project must navigate, and how we approach them.
What clients usually want to know before we start.
A free, no-obligation introductory call of half an hour. We listen to your brand, your channels and the systems you run today, and give you direction you can act on. For related projects we can also look at your B2C app strategy, or broader app development if the scope goes beyond retail alone.
Looking for a more concrete picture of what's possible? See building retail task management software on applatenmaken.com.
For pet shops that must register each animal, there's our animal registration software for pet shops.
For bakeries, butchers and caterers who take orders for the next day, there's our day-order app for fresh food retailers.
If your shop window holds items that don't belong to you and need separate settlement after sale, take a look at our consignment administration app for jewellers.
If you sell perfume and want to manage samples and testers from brands, there's our sample management software for perfumeries.
For retailers using ASPOS alongside their own loyalty programme or dashboard, see our page on an ASPOS integration.
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