All work

2023 – 2025 · Founder, design & development

Amber Second Hand Textbooks

A marketplace app for second-hand textbooks that reached 100 students across 15 campuses before I retired it.

Amber Second Hand Textbooks cover image

Role

Founder, design & development

Timeline

2023 – 2025 · Retired

Stack

Flutter · Dart · Firebase Auth · Firestore · Cloud Storage

Overview

Textbooks are expensive and mostly used for one semester. Amber gave students a simple place to list the books they no longer needed and find the ones they did, second-hand and close by.

I built it solo from 2023 to 2025, from the first sketches to the App Store and Google Play: a store of listings with photos and condition tags, favourites, a bag and orders, seller listings with bank details for payouts, and meet-ups to hand the books over.

It grew to 100 users across 15 campuses before I retired it in 2025. It taught me more about shipping and supporting a real product than anything else I have built alone.

App Store & Google Play

Published on both stores, reviewed and live.

100 users · 15 campuses

Real students, real listings, real support requests.

Browse, buy & sell

Listings, favourites, bag, orders and seller payouts.

Solo build

Product, design, code and release, 2023 to 2025.

Gallery

Presenting Amber as its solo developer.
Presenting Amber as its solo developer.

Screens

Sell: the store with featured listings and a create-listing flow.
Sell: the store with featured listings and a create-listing flow.
Buy: a listing with edition, condition tags, campus and add-to-bag.
Buy: a listing with edition, condition tags, campus and add-to-bag.
Profile: cart, orders, listings, bank account for payouts, and admin controls.
Profile: cart, orders, listings, bank account for payouts, and admin controls.
Amber, a mobile platform to buy and sell second-hand textbooks.
Amber, a mobile platform to buy and sell second-hand textbooks.
Building the feature-based Flutter codebase on the iOS simulator.
Building the feature-based Flutter codebase on the iOS simulator.
A short walkthrough of the app.

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