Thorns Group · Development lead
Thorns Portal
For Thorns Group, one of the UK's largest furniture hire companies, I led development of a cloud-native ordering portal. It pairs a Flutter front end with Python services on Google Cloud Platform, Firebase Authentication with role-based access, scheduled stock checks and SendGrid emails. The portal is in use, lets customers amend large orders instantly and has reduced manual work.
- Client
- Thorns Group
- Studio
- Rigstore
- Role
- Development lead
- Year
- 2024 to 2025
- Tech
- Flutter, Python, Google Cloud Platform, Firebase Authentication, SendGrid
The challenge
Thorns Group is one of the UK's largest furniture hire companies. They needed a platform that could handle multi-million-pound orders while giving customers the ease of use they expect from the big online retailers.
- Customers had to be able to place, update and change orders without friction.
- The old system was insecure, rigid and hard to update, which slowed down both customers and staff.
- Scale and reliability were critical: a single order could cover thousands of items across several event sites, areas and times.
What I did
- I led the design and delivery of a cloud-native client portal for one of the UK's largest furniture hire companies, replacing a rigid legacy system that struggled with security, updates and multi-million-pound orders.
- I built a Flutter front end for mobile and desktop with Python services on Google Cloud, giving customers an Amazon-style experience while staying highly available and scalable.
- I implemented Firebase Authentication with role-based access, and automated timed jobs for real-time stock checks across thousands of items, sites and times.
- I integrated SendGrid for order confirmations and updates, and built end-to-end order and user management for instant amendments and approvals.
- I handled the full domain and cloud infrastructure set-up.
The outcome
- Customers can now amend large orders instantly, the way they would on a major online shop.
- The platform is as easy to update as it is to use, so new features can be added without the overhead of a legacy system.
- Technical changes are quicker and cheaper to make than on a standard platform.
- The portal is in use, has reduced manual work and gives the company a platform it can scale with.
