Home Grown Craft Community Platform

Abstract

The rapid growth of digital marketplaces has created new opportunities for promoting local handmade products; however, many artisans still face challenges in reaching customers, managing their businesses efficiently, and participating in exhibitions through a unified digital platform. To address these challenges, this project presents *HomeGrown*, an integrated cross-platform marketplace designed to connect customers, artisans, exhibition owners, and administrators within a single responsive environment. The platform was developed using *Flutter* for the frontend and *Laravel* for the backend, with *MySQL* used for data management and *Firebase* services providing real-time messaging and push notifications. HomeGrown combines e-commerce functionality with social networking features, allowing users to browse and purchase handmade products, communicate through real-time chat, share stories and posts, follow artisans, submit ratings and comments, and participate in community interactions. To enhance the user experience, the platform incorporates an AI-inspired personalized recommendation system based on a hierarchical scoring algorithm that analyzes user interactions and preferences to generate customized product feeds. In addition, a rule- based Business Insights module provides artisans with intelligent recommendations derived from sales performance, customer engagement, and stock availability. The system also supports exhibition management, promotional offers, analytics dashboards, and comprehensive administration tools for monitoring platform performance. The implemented platform successfully achieved its intended objectives by integrating multiple services into a unified ecosystem that supports local artisans, improves customer engagement, and simplifies exhibition and business management. The results demonstrate the feasibility of combining e-commerce, real-time communication, data analytics, and intelligent recommendation techniques to create a scalable and practical digital marketplace that contributes to the promotion and sustainability of local handmade products.