Systems · Our own business

Every second-hand console, with a clear record of its own.

Retro Boys Gaming: the inventory system and the logo of our own console resale business

Kind of work: Systems
Project: Our own business
Scope: Inventory system · Logo · Design and build
Year: 2026

Retro Boys Gaming

Retro Boys Gaming is a business of our own: we restore PSP and PS Vita consoles and sell them on. We designed its logo and built the system it runs on, and we use that system every day.

No two second-hand consoles are alike. Condition, colour, storage, accessories, firmware and photographs all have to be written down machine by machine. The same console is listed on Facebook Marketplace, Instagram, Karrot and Xiaohongshu at once, and when it sells, what was handed over and how it was paid for has to be checked.

So the aim was plain: manage it on a computer, photograph on a phone, and keep one complete record of each console from the day it comes in to the day it is sold. We did all of it, from working out how the business runs to the interface, the code and putting it to use.

The thinking

The decisions behind it

One console, one file001

Every console has its own number, and getting it ready is split into states that do not get in each other’s way: firmware to do, photographs to take, accessories missing, ready to list, listed, sold. A console with a fault is marked for repair, and the system will not let it be listed or sold.
Take the photographs, and the listing is written002

Open a console on the computer, scan a code with the phone, and the photographs go straight in: made smaller, stripped of their location, the first one set as the main picture. From the model, colour, condition, price and accessories the system writes the English listing, ready to copy to each platform. What we paid, what was wrong with it and our own notes stay inside and never reach the listing.
Stock goes down by what was really handed over003

Accessories are counted by type, each with its cost. A bundle is only a list filled in ahead of time: when a console sells, stock goes down by what the customer actually took, at the cost it had that day. A mistake can be undone and the stock comes back. Returns work the same way, in part or in whole, and a refund can never be more than what was paid.
Numbers that do not flatter004

Each month shows net sales, gross profit, margin, the number of sales, and where they came from. The page says plainly that this profit is before any cost that was not entered, so it is not net profit. Behind it, a sale or a return goes through whole or not at all, a retry on a bad connection cannot take stock twice, and every change keeps what was there before.