Rescuing a marketplace, fixing vendor payouts
Melted Inside is a UK multi-vendor marketplace for artisan food and drink. Encomage inherited it live and losing money — slow, with broken multi-vendor orders and vendor payouts that didn't reconcile — then stabilized the codebase, automated commissions and invoicing, and closed a critical security gap (2020–2023).
THE CLIENT
Melted Inside is a UK online marketplace bringing together independent food and drink producers — its "Makers" — under one storefront, spanning categories from chocolate, bakery and deli to wine, spirits and vegan and free-from ranges. As a true multi-vendor platform, it has to do more than sell: it splits orders across multiple Makers, tracks commissions, pays vendors, and keeps a large, multi-seller catalogue running smoothly — all on a heavily customized Magento 2 build.
The challenge
Encomage inherited a marketplace that was already live, already taking orders, and already losing money. The platform had been built by previous developers who left the client stranded, and the custom multi-vendor logic at the heart of the business was failing in exactly the places that matter most — orders, payouts and security.
- Multi-vendor orders were breaking. Orders that spanned several Makers — the core mechanic of the marketplace — didn't process reliably, putting purchases and customer trust at risk on a site that was actively trading.
- Vendor payouts didn't add up. Commission calculations and what each Maker was owed didn't reconcile, creating a manual, error-prone financial mess and friction with the very sellers the marketplace depends on.
- An unstable, insecure inherited codebase. The platform was slow, fragile and carried a serious security vulnerability — later actively exploited — on top of technical debt left behind by the original team, all while the business had no choice but to keep operating.
The solution
Encomage stepped in as the long-term engineering partner, first stabilizing a live, abandoned platform, then re-engineering the financial backbone the marketplace runs on.
Stabilized the inherited codebase.
Took ownership of an abandoned, heavily customized Magento 2 build — diagnosing and fixing the failures across multi-vendor orders, performance and day-to-day operations to make a live, money-losing site dependable again.
Automated vendor commission calculations.
Replaced unreliable, mismatched commission handling with automatic calculation of what Melted Inside earned and what each Maker was owed — removing the manual reconciliation that had been causing errors and seller friction.
Automated vendor invoicing.
Built automatic invoice generation for Makers, turning a manual financial process into a consistent, repeatable one and giving the marketplace a clean payout workflow.
Closed a critical security gap.
Investigated and remediated a serious vulnerability that had been exploited, hardened the platform, and maintained its security posture — with no further breaches across the entire engagement.
Ongoing platform maintenance (2020–2023).
Provided sustained engineering across the marketplace — fixing bugs, keeping multi-vendor operations running, and supporting the catalogue, checkout and Stripe payments over a multi-year partnership.
Vendor payouts that finally add up. Commission calculations and Maker invoicing were rebuilt to run automatically — replacing the manual, mismatched reconciliation that had been causing errors and seller friction. (Sample data shown.)
At a glance
Client
Melted Inside
Industry
E-commerce — Multi-Vendor Marketplace · Artisan Food & Drink
Region
United Kingdom · B2C shoppers + independent vendors
Services
Inherited platform stabilization · Custom multi-vendor engineering · Commission & invoicing automation · Security remediation & hardening · Ongoing Magento maintenance
Technologies
Magento 2 (custom multi-vendor module), PHP, Stripe, Magefan Blog, GTM
Timeline
Multi-year partnership · 2020–2023
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THE RESULT
Encomage turned an abandoned, money-losing marketplace into a stable, secure platform the business could rely on. Multi-vendor operations were fixed and stabilized; commission calculations and Maker invoicing became automatic instead of manual and error-prone; and the critical security hole was closed, with no further breaches for the rest of the engagement. Over three years (2020–2023), Melted Inside went from a fragile inherited build to a dependable marketplace — keeping orders flowing, sellers paid correctly, and customer data protected.
Orders stabilized
Fixed the broken multi-vendor order behavior so a live marketplace could trade reliably across many Makers.
Payouts automated
Commission calculations and invoice generation made automatic, eliminating manual reconciliation and the discrepancies that strained seller relationships.
Security restored
A critical, exploited vulnerability remediated and the platform hardened — no further breaches across the partnership.
3 years' stewardship
A long-term engineering relationship (2020–2023) that kept an inherited platform running and improving.
Services on this project
The Encomage services that delivered this outcome. Keep only the ones that apply and link each to its service page — one, two, or three.
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See It In Action
The marketplace's core mechanic, working again. A single customer order splits cleanly across several independent Makers — the multi-vendor flow that had been breaking on a live, trading site.
Independent "Makers" sell side by side under one storefront — from chocolate and bakery to wine, spirits and free-from ranges — on one heavily customized Magento 2 marketplace.
A large, multi-seller catalogue kept running smoothly across categories — the everyday retail the rescue was there to protect.
TECHNOLOGIES
