01 · The challenge
What needed solving
Caribbean creative talent — models, performers, hosts — was scattered across Instagram DMs and WhatsApp groups. Casting directors had no structured way to filter on the attributes they actually book on (height, hair, eye colour, experience), and there was no payment rail for premium discovery.
02 · Our approach
How we framed the work
We started with a discovery sprint to map the user journey, business goals and real constraints. From there we wrote a fixed-scope plan: clear milestones, weekly review gates on a staging URL, and a written exit criterion for every phase. The web development space rewards teams that ship — not teams that plan — so we biased the engagement towards working software from week two onward.
03 · The solution
What we built
We built a Laravel marketplace with a 49-model domain. Talents go through a multi-step profile builder covering appearance (height, weight, hair colour / length / style, eye colour, ethnicity), location, experience, media gallery with reorderable photos, social links and intro video. Employers post jobs through a similar multi-step flow (info, payment, location, publisher, criteria, application). Stripe powers premium subscriptions with free, paid, re-subscribe and cancellation flows. A Q&A forum with nested replies and voting, event RSVPs, in-platform chat with bulk-message-to-applicants, saved searches, talent verification requests and a Filament admin with country-scoped CSV export round out the platform. PDFs of talent profiles are generated on demand.
04 · The results
What changed for the client.
Casting directors filter on 10+ structured attributes instead of scrolling Instagram
Stripe subscriptions monetise premium discovery without bolting on a separate billing tool
In-platform chat keeps the booking conversation auditable — no more lost DMs
Tech stack
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