Replatforming and extending a global marketplace for professional production equipment.

GearSource connects manufacturers, production and rental companies, resellers and individual industry professionals with buyers looking for new and used professional equipment.

Founded in 2002, the business serves a global community across live production, touring, broadcasting and entertainment technology. Users can participate as buyers, sellers or both.

Moving an established platform without losing what made it work

GearSource was not launching a marketplace from the beginning. The business already had an established international user base, a large specialist catalogue and marketplace processes developed through more than two decades of operation.

Moving the platform therefore required more than transferring listings into a new interface. Journeyhorizon needed to migrate data from Nautical to Sharetribe while preserving the workflows and business logic GearSource depended on. The new platform also needed to support requirements beyond standard marketplace functionality, including specialised product catalogues, shopping-cart purchases, multiple payments, seller payouts, international shipping, tax handling, equipment inspection, administration and bulk inventory management.

The challenge was to create a more stable and extensible platform without reducing GearSource’s specialist operating model to a generic marketplace template.

Marketplace migration and platform foundation

Journeyhorizon transferred GearSource’s marketplace data from Nautical to Sharetribe and established the foundation for the new platform. The migration preserved the information required by the existing marketplace while giving GearSource a platform that could be extended through custom software rather than restricted to standard marketplace functionality.

Specialist catalogue and purchasing experience

Professional production equipment varies by brand, model, configuration, condition, quantity and location. The marketplace needed to make this specialist inventory easier to organise, discover and purchase.Journeyhorizon developed product catalogue and shopping-cart functionality around these requirements. Bulk-upload capabilities were also introduced to make larger inventories easier for sellers and marketplace administrators to manage. GearSource currently organises seller listings through a master product structure, enabling buyers to compare available items, conditions and prices under a common equipment record.

Custom transaction and payment workflows

GearSource required more than a direct payment between one buyer and one seller. Journeyhorizon developed a custom transaction flow with multiple-payment support and integrated Airwallex for seller payouts. GearSource’s payment infrastructure manages the distribution of incoming funds according to predefined proportions. This allows transactions to account for seller payments and other commercial components within the order process.

The result is a transaction system designed around the actual requirements of a global equipment marketplace rather than a conventional single-vendor checkout.

Shipping, tax and equipment inspection

Journeyhorizon integrated the marketplace with a shipping broker API and tax functionality to support transactions across different locations and jurisdictions. The platform also incorporates GearSource’s buyer-protection process. Buyers receive a two-business-day inspection period after delivery to verify that the equipment matches its listing and performs as expected. GearSource holds the transaction within its payment process until the required order stages have been completed, helping protect both sides of the marketplace. This is particularly important for specialist, used and high-value equipment, where condition and technical performance can materially affect a purchase.

Marketplace administration and demand-led sourcing

Journeyhorizon developed an administrative dashboard to help the GearSource team manage marketplace activity. The delivery also included bulk-upload functionality and NeedZone, a custom sourcing feature for buyers who cannot find the equipment they need in the current catalogue. NeedZone gives users a way to submit a request for unavailable equipment, extending marketplace discovery beyond the products already listed. Together, these capabilities support both supply-led product discovery and buyer-led demand.

Strengthening the search foundation of a large marketplace

Journeyhorizon’s relationship with GearSource later expanded into marketplace SEO and organic growth.With thousands of products and more than 100 categories, GearSource faced technical and structural issues that were limiting how effectively its marketplace pages could be crawled, indexed and discovered. The identified problems included soft 404 errors, pages being crawled but not indexed, inefficient crawl activity, low-value URLs, declining index coverage and limited search-focused content. Journeyhorizon developed a marketplace-specific growth programme covering:

Technical SEO

Indexing controls, canonical implementation, structured data and the management of low-value URLs.

Marketplace architecture

Clearer relationships between products, categories and supporting pages.

Search-focused content

Category content aligned with relevant customer demand and search intent.

Internal linking

A stronger internal structure to improve navigation, crawlability and the distribution of authority across the marketplace. This was a later engagement, separate from the original platform migration, but it benefited from Journeyhorizon’s existing understanding of GearSource’s technology and marketplace model.

A more stable platform with stronger foundations for growth

The replatformed marketplace gave GearSource a more stable operating foundation while simplifying the experience for users who had interacted with several versions of the platform over more than 20 years. The custom development also enabled GearSource to retain its specialist transaction and operational requirements instead of adapting the business to standard platform limitations. Journeyhorizon reports the following results from the later SEO engagement:

These figures relate specifically to the marketplace SEO and organic-growth work, not the original migration and development engagement.

“Journeyhorizon has been a very good partner to us, and we’re super happy with the results. Leadership from Matt and the project managers was fantastic. The new platform simplified the user experience and provided a more stable platform, delighting GearSource users who have experienced various versions over 20+ years.”
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Marcel Fairbairn
‍Founder, GearSource