Case Study: African Cartel achieves an online marketplace and e-commerce sales for disadvantaged Robot Artists with WooCommerce

African Cartel - Customer Case Study

African Cartel is an online marketplace launched to showcase and sell work by disadvantaged, predominantly Zimbabwean “Robot Artists.” The project needed a directory-style site to host artist listings, a short film, image galleries and e-commerce — all under time pressure and with limited custom-coding resources. Key challenges included modelling artists and art pieces, adapting a directory theme to the project’s look and creating a way to associate individual images with products and accept donations.

The team built the site on WordPress using the Listings theme and a child theme, created an Artists custom post type with bespoke taxonomies and image fields, and added custom templates and a looped image slider for galleries. E-commerce was implemented with Cart66 (plus a custom class to link products to images) and PayPal checkout, while Gravity Forms handled contact needs. The result was a cost‑effective, quickly delivered marketplace — most functionality built in days — that showcases galleries, supports purchases and accepts donations.

African Cartel

Xenia

African Cartel