tern

About the Company

Tern is a B2B SaaS company that provides software enabling retailers to engage with the circular economy through trade-in and resale.

Tern was founded by Kate Walmsley and Zoe Rowswell in 2020.

My Role

I was employee #1 at Tern, initially joining on a contract basis to support the development of the first version of the product. While my official title was Product Owner, my role extended well beyond that—I was involved in almost every aspect of the company at some point.

Tern v1 was built in collaboration with a leading UK e-commerce agency, and I was deeply involved in the development process. I provided the majority of the UX and UI designs, defined the MVP requirements and wrote PRDs, and carried out comprehensive QA testing on all work before release. The initial solution was a Shopify app, designed to seamlessly integrate with merchants on the platform.

As Tern grew, we made the strategic decision to bring development in-house. From that point, we worked directly with remote contractors to continue evolving the product.

Working at Tern was incredibly rewarding, requiring me to rapidly develop new skills and devise innovative solutions with minimal resources.

I left Tern in 2023 to gain experience working on more established products and with larger teams.

Highlights

• Led the development of Tern Trade-in v1 from concept to launch
• Built a Warehouse Management System using no-code tools, which processed over 20,000 products for a key client
• Developed a new front-end using Next.js, allowing non-Shopify merchants to access our services
• Contributed to Polarn O. Pyret’s Second Hand Programme, which won the Drapers Award for Best Circularity Initiative in 2023