HectorMulti-brand operations platform
One system for several brands. Each brand's orders, stock, and users stay isolated from the others. It covers 11 sales channels through warehouse, supply chain, HR, and analytics.
Built as a full-stack engineer at Retrovgames. The platform belongs to them. This page describes the system I designed and shipped there.
Both store portals open after the customer signs in.
Business Context
Problem, approach, and outcome at a glance
The Challenge
A multi-brand e-commerce operation was running orders, inventory, procurement, fulfillment, returns, and HR across disconnected tools — manual handoffs, duplicate data entry, and no single source of truth under heavy transactional load.
The Solution
Hector unifies the entire operational lifecycle in one platform: order intake from 11 channels, warehouse fulfillment with hardware integrations, supply chain procurement, inventory (dual-system migration), post-sale workflows, analytics, and granular RBAC across every module.
The Impact
Three to four people were doing this order work by hand. The same flow now runs with one person. Hector processes 200 to 300 orders a day across the marketplaces. Report corrections that used to be pulled from separate tools now come out of Hector in one click.
11 Sales Channels
Unified order intake pipeline
7 Business Domains · 28+ Modules
Every domain is open. Collapse any section you do not need.
Order Processing
Central hub ingesting orders from 11 channels simultaneously — Shopify (RetroFam & Retro vGames), Walmart US/CA/MX, WooCommerce, Newegg, Temu, Amazon SP-API, eBay Scrapper, Mercari CSV, and manual orders.
- WFO — Walmart Fulfillment with USB scale integration via SerialPort and ShipStation rate shopping
- TOF — Temu native label system with PDF rendering and label history
- Dedicated Amazon order processing view and order analytics dashboard
Order Fulfillment + SSOT
Post-pick workflow: packing with photo capture, dropship OOS tracking, ShipStation label generation, and SSOT — a pre-computed aggregate per order updated via BullMQ.
- Performance & activity logs for fulfillment teams
- Multi-carrier rate shopping through ShipStation
eBay Scrapper
Separate from marketplace eBay — manages buyer accounts, generates labels via EasyPost, tracks shipments via webhooks, with dedicated health check routes.
Sourcing
Staff submit sourcing requests; sourcers create, purchasers pick up. Role mapping via sourcerPurchaserMappingModel with dashboard and timeline logs.
Purchasing
Purchasers act on sourcing requests — pending queue, active listings, returned listings, cross-referenced with SNP data.
SNP — Seller & Purchaser Dashboard
Feature-rich supply chain hub: SKU listings, real-time auctions via Socket.IO, price management feeding the Pricing Engine, supplier management, and competitor scrape crons via BullMQ.
Procurement Management
Most complex module — PO creation with multi-step forms, box tracking, document attachments, shipping details, landed cost allocation, kits, targets, barcode receive scans, CSV bulk import, and multi-warehouse delivery routing.
Inbound
Receives procurement at warehouse — parcel and bulk shipments, flagged orders, unidentified parcels, activity logs, and period-scoped inbound inventory valuation.
Internal Warehouse Transfer
Mirrors procurement pattern for inter-warehouse stock moves — boxes, documents, costs, shipping, serial numbers, activity logs, and dashboard with multi-warehouse support.
Inventory Management (New)
Future-state inventory: master SKU quantities warmed in memory at startup, warehouse scoping, ledger for every stock movement, cycle counts, exceptions, reports, and WFS overlay.
Inventory Management (Legacy)
Original system still live during migration — coexists with new module; no deletion until cutover complete.
Virtual Inventory
All-time in/out calculation per SKU — answers 'what do we have right now?' across procurement, transfers, sales, and returns.
WFS Inventory
Walmart Fulfillment Services stock tracking at Walmart FCs with replenishment pipeline service.
Products
Master catalog — base products, kits/bundles, serial number tracking with auto-generation, marketplace listings, and cross-platform SKU mapping.
Scan
Warehouse floor tool with GlobalScannerContext, barcode + QR lookup, camera scanning via Quagga2 and ZXing.
Brand Returns (RMA)
Full return lifecycle — customer and manual returns, defect reports with activity logs, physical receiving, auto-sync from Shopify/WooCommerce/Walmart crons, Freshdesk ticket creation, ShipStation label tracking.
Reshipment
Re-sends when original shipment fails — links to dropship and FFJ records with export support.
Repair & QA (Refurbishment)
Multi-stage QA: scan-in, workshop repair tracking, PDF testing guides, troubleshooting docs, multi-warehouse QA stages.
Trade-Ins
Reads trade-in data from Customer Portal MongoDB, staff comments locally, email notifications, two-way reply webhook, portal sync.
Customer Portal Management
Portal users, coupons, reviews, FAQs, Retrocoins loyalty, and product sync management.
Email Configuration
Per-event email rules, customizable HTML templates, activity logs, Omnisend marketing events, custom SMTP (Namecheap Private Email).
Refunds
Unified refund management — approval workflow, platform execution, Shopify-native refund posting, unified log across platforms.
Sellerboard Analytics
Platform-by-platform sales analytics — Shopify live; Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Newegg built with per-platform P&L analysis.
Pricing Engine (CPS)
Competitive price system scraping 10+ competitor sites (DKOldies, GameStop, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Best Buy, Newegg, PriceCharting, etc.) via BullMQ + Cheerio with scrape health monitoring.
Export Center
Download any data as Excel/CSV — platform sales, inventory reports, custom configs via ExcelJS and xlsx.
Administration & Live Monitoring
Real-time active user monitoring via Socket.IO presence — login/logout, page activity, heartbeat, stale presence cron. Admin-only view.
SLA & Tickets Management
Internal ticketing with assignment, escalation, SLA departments, activity audit trail, handling time tracking, real-time due-soon alerts via Socket.IO.
User Management
Granular RBAC from modulesRegistry.js, login history, session logs, failed login tracking, user activity logs, multi-company structure.
Employee Management
Employee records separate from auth users with payroll data per employee.
Attendance
Clock-in/out with kiosk mode for warehouse tablets, validation rules, and company attendance configuration.
Time Off Management
Leave requests with approval workflow, time off types, and per-employee allocation management.
Payroll
Calculation engine, PDF payslip generation, tax configuration, and payroll recalculation support.
Key Architecture Decisions
Patterns that make Hector production-grade
Separate Frontend & Backend Repos
Hector-client (React 19 + Vite) and the Hector server (Node.js/Express) are maintained as separate repositories — clear ownership boundaries with REST APIs and shared domain contracts connecting both codebases.
JWT + Granular RBAC
Authentication via JWT + express-session. RequirePermission on the client and requirePermission() middleware on the server. Every module registers in modulesRegistry.js with configurable role permissions.
Eventually-Consistent SSOT
Single Source of Truth is a pre-computed master collection — updated asynchronously via BullMQ workers after fulfillment events. Never written to directly; always query-optimized.
Silent Warehouse Printing
QZ Tray signs certificates server-side (RSA) and sends labels directly to thermal printers — ShipStation, WFO, and TOF native labels print with zero browser dialogs.
Dual Inventory Migration
Legacy inventory coexists with the new Inventory Management module during migration. New features ship only in the new system; zero downtime cutover strategy.
Hardware + Real-Time Layer
DYMO USB scales communicate via Node.js SerialPort; weight telemetry streams to browsers over Socket.IO for WFO workflows. Multi-warehouse scoping across procurement, transfers, inventory, and QA.
20+ Third-Party Integrations
Marketplaces, shipping, hardware, queues, and more
Marketplace / Sales Channels
7 integrationsOrder sync, webhooks, refunds — RetroFam & Retro vGames
US/CA/MX orders, WFO labels, returns, tracking
Order sync, webhooks, returns, hold/cancel
Order sync, label tracking
Order sync, TOF native labels, after-sales
Order processing
Scrapper module labels and tracking
Shipping & Fulfillment
3 integrationsCore shipping backbone — labels, rate shopping, tracking
Rate shopping supplement
eBay scrapper labels, WOF tracking webhooks
Printing & Hardware
3 integrationsSilent thermal label printing — RSA-signed certificates
Live USB weight for WFO workflow
Quagga2, ZXing, jsQR for warehouse floor
Cloud, Email & CRM
5 integrationsPacking photos, documents, uploads
Product image hosting
Transactional emails across all modules
WooCommerce dropship marketing events
CRM tickets from brand returns
Database & AI
2 integrationsOCR and document scanning
Hector DB + Customer Portal DB
Real-Time & Queues
3 integrationsPresence, auctions, SLA alerts, scale telemetry
SSOT sync, scrapes, label tracking jobs
Returns sync, presence cleanup, cross-ref sync
Core Technology Stack
Full Stack Engineer · Separate repos — React 19 + Vite frontend, Node.js/Express backend
Need an operations platform at this scale?
Hector represents the kind of enterprise infrastructure I design and ship — multi-channel order ops, warehouse integrations, and RBAC across dozens of modules.