Digital Marketplace and Community Hub for the Tailoring Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of needle360°—an integrated digital marketplace and community hub for optimizing operational workflows in the Sri Lankan tailoring industry. Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) in this sector are significantly behind in their digital transformation, relying instead on labor-intensive manual operations for order processing, inventory tracking, and communicating with customers. This research narrows the gap of traditional operations to modern technology solutions through a careful engineering process using Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM). This research involved 15 tailors and 50 customers of Kahathuduwa and Homagama as active participants including a needs assessment, co-design of the solution and iterative identification of features. This platform was developed by utilizing the MERN stack architecture (MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js) and deployed on the AWS cloud with Docker containers. Unique and innovative aspects of the platform include a 3D design tool, multi-vendor marketplace architecture, and more customer tailor interactions. A systematic evaluation through pre/post implementation surveys, system performance, and user testing produced significant improvements: order accuracy increased 85%, customer communication increased 72%, and the average time to execute daily tasks decreased by 60%. Performance metrics for the system averaged 1.2 seconds response time and 99.5% uptime throughout the evaluation process. The research provides both a practical digital solution and a methodological approach explaining how structured, participatory design approaches can be effectively used to bridge the digitalization gap, while maintaining cultural context and accounting for infrastructure limitations in developing countries.