Marketing platform for opticians

Opticians know eyewear – most don't know marketing. As the industry shifted from offline to online, many retailers were falling behind. With Gravitales, I helped build Foconn from the ground up: a platform that packaged professional marketing campaigns into simple, purchasable "tickets" – so an optician could launch a social media presence or run an ad campaign as easily as placing an online order.

The problem

The optician industry was stuck between two worlds. Customers were moving online, but most retailers didn't have the skills or resources to follow them there. They needed marketing – but building an in-house capability or hiring an agency was out of reach for most independent shops.

What we built

Foconn turned marketing into a product. Opticians created a profile, browsed a store of standardized marketing packages – we called them "tickets" – and purchased what they needed. Tickets ranged from logo design and social media setup to ongoing content subscriptions.

The platform wasn't just for retailers. Manufacturers got direct access to regional opticians – they could push targeted content and offers at special rates through exclusive manufacturer tickets. That two-sided model was what made the business interesting: opticians got affordable marketing, manufacturers got a distribution channel they'd never had.

How I built it

As Creative Technologist, I was responsible for business modeling, technical architecture, and building the first prototypes. We ran design sprints to answer the critical questions early – could opticians navigate the platform? Would manufacturers pay for access? Each sprint was five days: conceive, design, prototype, test with real users. That approach let us validate the business model before investing in a full build.

For the MVP, I chose Meteor.js with a React frontend – it gave us real-time updates and built-in user management out of the box, which was critical for a two-sided marketplace where both opticians and manufacturers needed to see changes immediately. The marketing site ran on Gatsby.js for speed, and everything was hosted on AWS.

The result

We took Foconn from an idea to a live platform – validated through design sprints, built for a market that had never had a product like this before.

„Michael and his team were our perfect partners, from the initial product idea, through the development of the suitable business model, the technical implementation to the conception of creative content. Thank you very much for everything."

– Martin Reich, Chief Executive Officer, Foconn GmbH

Get in touch if you're planning to build something similar.