Hivey · Head of Design, concept to launch
Taking a vendor platform from concept to launch
Venues were coordinating vendors through endless texts and losing revenue to no-shows, and early users thought Hivey was a food truck finder. As Head of Design, I took it from first concept to market launch and fixed both problems.
- Role
- Head of Design
- Timeline
- Mar – Oct 2024
- Scope
- Research, product, launch
- Industry
- Hospitality, B2B SaaS
- Challenge
- Manual vendor scheduling, costly no-shows, and a product people misunderstood.
- What I did
- Led research, product design, the design system, and launch positioning.
- Outcome
- 40%+ of the Denver vendor market in one week, and NPS up 18%.
My role
I led design from initial concept to market launch, working closely with engineering, product, and marketing.
- User research and persona development
- The full design lifecycle, from wireframes and prototypes to high-fidelity mockups
- A design system to keep components consistent as features grew
- Launch positioning and the early-access experience
The problem
Breweries, farmers markets, and wineries book food trucks and vendors every week, and the work was eating their time:
- Communication sprawl. Every booking meant a thread of emails and texts to confirm or cancel.
- No-shows. Vendors cancelled without notice, and venues lost revenue.
- Manual scheduling. Tracking who was coming when led to errors and double-handling.
There was a second problem. Early users thought Hivey was a vendor locator, not a vendor management platform, which slowed adoption.
Research and insights
I interviewed hospitality operators about how they actually scheduled vendors and what went wrong.
- The buyer is the venueThe pain, and the decision to pay, sat with venues. Vendors would follow if venues adopted.
- Cancellations cost the mostA no-show meant an empty slot and lost sales, and fixing it took a string of messages.
- The pitch was wrongPeople read “find vendors” when we meant “manage vendors.”
Key decisions
Design equally for both sides of the marketplace
Prioritize the venue workflow, and give vendors a free dashboard
WhyVenues pay and drive adoption. A free vendor tier kept the marketplace full without splitting focus.
Automate bookings only
Automate cancellations too: approved backup vendors are notified when someone drops
WhyNo-shows were the costliest failure. Refilling a slot without a single text is what venues remembered.
Add features to win early users
Fix the positioning first, with a rewritten early-access page and an ROI calculator
WhyThe product already solved the problem. People just didn’t know it. A dollar figure answered the cost objection directly.
A two-month free trial, promoted through local Facebook groups and Denver influencers, lowered the barrier for venues that were hesitant about cost.
The product
I validated the new flows in usability sessions and iterated on what we saw before launch.
Results
- 40%+of the Denver vendor market captured within one week
- +18%NPS increase as venues simplified operations
- 12%less admin time on vendor management in the first quarter
Solving the day-to-day work of vendor management, and explaining it clearly, gave Hivey a foundation to expand beyond Denver.