Velades Candle Shop

Overview

A full-stack commerce platform created for a candle business to support online sales and internal operations in one system. The project included a customer-facing storefront, catalog and product flows, authentication, and an administrative area for managing products, users, orders, reviews, and business entities. I owned the project end to end, including product direction, architecture, and implementation decisions across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and deployment. The platform was designed as a practical production-oriented system rather than a demo storefront, with a focus on maintainability, operational usefulness, and scalable structure.

My role

• Owned the project and its technical architecture end to end across frontend, backend, admin workflows, and infrastructure.
• Built backend functionality with FastAPI and PostgreSQL data models for users, products, categories, reviews, orders, and related business entities.
• Developed both storefront and administrative product workflows to support browsing, management, and day-to-day operations.
• Implemented Redis-backed caching, JWT authentication, and API protection patterns.
• Integrated Redis and Celery for background task execution, including asynchronous email and media-related processes.
• Set up deployment-oriented infrastructure using Docker, Nginx, and production-style server configuration.

Implementation

• Public-facing catalog and product browsing experience.
• Admin area for managing products, orders, users, reviews, and business data.
• Authentication and access control for protected product areas.
• Caching and background task processing for asynchronous operations.
• Full-stack structure spanning frontend, backend, database, queue, and deployment layers.

Outcome

• Delivered a production-oriented full-stack commerce platform for a real business domain.
• Moved the project to a self-service online model with its own management and sales workflows.
• Built a structured architecture combining storefront, admin workflows, backend services, database, caching, and background processing.