Building the brand, the UX, and the storefront myself

The brief

I founded M•GonaShop in 2018 with a simple idea: give people in Madagascar a place to shop online for everything from electronics and phones to cosmetics, fashion, and home goods, with delivery reaching customers nationwide rather than just one city, the kind of experience closer to what Noon or Amazon offer elsewhere. As founder, I wore every hat the project needed, from the platform itself to what happened after someone hit checkout.

The process

Building M•GonaShop meant owning the full picture, not just the storefront. I designed and developed the platform itself, but the real work extended well beyond that, into managing orders, coordinating deliveries across the country, and handling billing on the administrative side. On top of running the platform, I also designed the advertising that brought people to it in the first place, building out the visuals and campaigns that made the shop visible in a crowded space.

In February 2026, the business had to pause. Most of my suppliers are based in Dubai, and when flights between Dubai and Madagascar were disrupted amid the unrest at the time, sourcing new stock became impossible, and with no way to keep the shelves supplied, keeping the platform running stopped making sense.

The outcome

Over the years, M•GonaShop delivered orders all across Madagascar, from major cities to more remote areas, with customers consistently happy with what they received. It ran as a real, functioning e-commerce business, not just a design exercise, with a platform, a delivery network, and satisfied customers behind it. It's the project that taught me the most about what "digital product" actually means beyond the interface, because when you're the founder, the design, the delivery, and the business itself all come from the same place.