Magpie Inventory
A stocktaking app for independent shops — scan a barcode, adjust the count, see what's low. Built for the shop floor, not the warehouse.
Problem & Scope
The Challenge
Inventory software is built for warehouses and priced for them too. A boutique with 800 products and two staff on shift gets offered a system that assumes a receiving bay, a barcode gun and someone whose job is inventory — or it gets a spreadsheet that was accurate last Sunday. The gap in the middle is enormous and badly served: shops that need an accurate count but cannot spend a training day or $49 per person per month to get one.
What We Built
- Native iPhone and iPad app, on the App Store
- Barcode scanning with the device camera
- Count sessions with variance against recorded stock
- Low-stock and expiry alerts
- iCloud sync across a shop's own devices
- Team sharing by invite link, at one flat price
- CSV import and export, on every plan including Free
- Marketing site, pricing, comparison pages and App Store listing
What Makes It Work
No Account to Create
Magpie has no login of its own. Sync and sharing run on the Apple Account already signed in on the device, and inventory lives in the shop's own iCloud rather than on a server anyone else operates. Fewer things to breach, and nothing to migrate if the app ever goes away.
Flat Team Pricing
Most inventory apps bill per seat, so hiring quietly raises the software bill. Magpie's Team plan covers the whole shop for one price. That's a pricing decision more than a technical one, and it's the main reason shops switch.
Works on the Shop Floor
Scanning and adjusting keep working when the Wi-Fi drops at the back of the stockroom — the case that breaks web-based tools, and the case that actually matters during a count.
How We Built It
Pick the Underserved Middle
Magpie is aimed at shops with roughly 100 to 3,000 products: too many for paper, nowhere near enough for a warehouse system. Naming that band narrowly made every later decision easier, and it's written on the site so the wrong customer can rule themselves out.
Let Apple Hold the Data
Building on iCloud rather than a bespoke backend removed a login, a server bill, a privacy policy problem and an entire class of outage. The cost is that Magpie is Apple-only, with no web version — a real limitation, and the right trade for this product.
Design the Count, Not the Database
The core loop is scan, adjust, move on, with no save button to remember. Everything else — reports, valuation, suppliers — sits behind that loop rather than in front of it, because a stocktake is done standing up with a customer waiting.
The App Is Half the Work
The marketing site, the pricing tiers, the comparison pages against the tools shops actually shortlist, and the App Store listing all shipped alongside the build. Software that nobody can find or price themselves into isn't finished — and that half is the one most developers skip.
We Can Build Something Like This For You.
Designed, built and shipped end to end — the storefront, the integration and the documentation. If your business needs the same, that is the work we do.