Skloogs was my first official business as a founder. The initial intent was to start an IT consulting company, providing system and networking related services from architecture, but I started building a website and quickly opted to develop an e-commerce technology marketplace.
Based on Joomla and the VirtueMart plug-in, the site ended offering 8000 product references, cleanly organized by categories and each product with their corresponding options and/or accessories. I negotiated with the main Brazilian distributors (Ingram Micro, TechData, Officer, Mude, All Nations, Network1 & SND Distribuição), and built some automated scraper to capture the list of products, including availability and price, and insert or update them into the site’s database. I also implemented online payments, through Moneris and PayPal, to accept credit cards from consumers, and also adapted the shipping systems from VirtueMart to the Brazilian postal services and couriers.
