No digital infrastructure
A guarded industry where deals ran on relationships and phone calls.
DBFEXPRODUCT DESIGN · 2023
DESIGNING TRUST INTO A MARKET THAT DIDN’T EXIST.
DBFEX trades whiskey barrels that sit in a warehouse for a decade. S2DO led product design: the valuation UX, the compliance onboarding, the secondary market and the system that held it together.
01 · The challenge
Nobody buys what they cannot see or price.
No shared reference price
Barrel pricing swung wildly, so every negotiation restarted from zero.
Capital locked for years
Maturation can run a decade. An exchange only works if people can exit early.
Different rules, one floor
Distilleries, brokers, bottlers and institutions needed one comprehensible market.
02 · The flow
Verification first. Then a market that never closes.
Compliance became the proof: every gate a user clears is visible to the people they trade with. The flow reads as a ledger, because that is how this audience already reads risk.
- 01
Create an account
KYB and identity verification before anything is visible.
- 02
Certify the barrel
Origin, age, distillery documents and storage confirmed by compliance.
- 03
Browse & value
AI Barrel Value Optimizer, live comparables and full provenance on every listing.
- 04
Offer, counter, settle
Negotiation as a visible thread; settlement recorded to the event log.
- 05
Hold or exit early
Take possession at bottling or sell into the secondary market.
- 06
Track appreciation
Real-time asset value and inventory management across the whole holding.
The exit step returns to the market. This secondary-market loop is what makes an early sale possible.
03 · Structure
The evidence stays beside the number.
The number a user acts on is never more than a glance from the reasoning behind it.
Portfolio
Total asset value leads, appreciation sits under it, and inventory reads as scannable rows.
Barrel detail
Valuation at the top, its reasoning directly beneath, provenance as a dated timeline.
Offer & counter
Negotiation reads as a thread, so both sides see exactly where a deal stands.
04 · The system
A system money can be read through.
Tabular figures, fixed decimal alignment, and one treatment each for gain, loss and pending. Semantic roles are shown here in the case-study palette, not the product’s own.
| Barrel | Age / origin | Value | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| High-Rye Bourbon | 4yr 10mo · KY | $3,707 | +12.0% |
| Wheated Bourbon | 6yr 4mo · KY | $2,900 | −1.8% |
- surface/base
- Tables and panels
- action/primary
- Place offer
- value/gain
- Appreciation
- value/loss
- Depreciation
- state/pending
- Awaiting counter
What shipped2 supporting views
The result
A pioneering marketplace in the spirits industry, where maturing barrels can be valued, bought, sold and exited early with the transparency investors expect from any other asset class.
- User types on one trading floor
- 05
- Exit routes instead of one
- 02
- Unverified barrels on the market
- 00
Further platform screens are available on request under NDA. DBFEX is the client; its product names and trademarks belong to their owner.
Discuss the confidential work