Why Teams Need Packages — And How I Built an E-Commerce Package That Changed Our Workflow | HackerNoon

Over the years, I’ve built multiple e-commerce applications across different industries – retail, inventory-driven businesses, branded stores, B2B procurement tools, and hybrid digital-commerce platforms.

After delivering the same core features repeatedly (products, categories, cart logic, stock management, discounts, variants, orders, invoicing, shipping rules, etc.), one thing became clear:

The team was reinventing the wheel every single time ☹️

Every new project meant rebuilding the same foundational components from scratch, copying logic between projects, refactoring old code, or spending hours aligning different developers on naming conventions and architecture decisions.

It wasn’t just inefficient. It slowed product delivery, introduced inconsistencies, and forced us to repeat a lot of low-level work.

So I took a step back and asked a simple question:

Why don’t we create a reusable Laravel package that standardises everything and lets developers focus on what actually matters?

Why Packages are important in Modern Software Engineering

Whether you’re building SaaS, e-commerce, HR systems, finance apps, or APIs, packages play an essential role in modern development.

1. Packages prevent reinventing the wheel

Common features — authentication, billing, carts, product catalogues, roles/permissions, notifications — don’t need to be rewritten.

A package means you solve the problem once, and every project benefits.

2. Packages enforce consistency across the team

When every developer builds their own version of:

• the product model
• the pricing logic
• the cart structure
• the stock update workflow

…it becomes difficult to maintain and scale.

A package provides one standard behaviour.

3. Packages increase development speed

Instead of starting projects from zero, the team installs

composer require damoscky/laravel-ecommerce-package

And immediately gets:

• Products
• Categories & Sub categories
• Returns & Refunds
• Cart functionality
• Orders
• Discounts
• Inventory
• Events & listeners
• Admin functionalities

This reduces project startup time dramatically.

4. Packages improve collaboration

Junior developers can plug into a system that’s already well designed. Senior developers can extend or override package behaviours. Everyone works from the same foundation.

5. Packages improve maintainability

If you need to fix a bug or improve a feature, you fix it once, and every project using the package benefits

6. Packages shows engineering maturity

Building a package forces you to think like a framework or library author:

• API design
• customisation points
• versioning
• configuration
• service providers
• publishing assets
• traits, facades, contracts

This is a different level of engineering discipline — and it helps your entire career.

How I Decided to Build My Own E-Commerce Package

After working on several e-commerce products, I realised that 70% of the work was identical:

• Product CRUD
• Image uploads
• Inventory syncing
• Sales logic
• Cart management
• Promo/discount rules
• Order generation
• Payment integration points
• Shipping calculators

I also realised:

• Our team repeated this work every few months.
• Each developer implemented it differently.
• Code quality varied between projects.
• Adding new developers meant re-explaining everything again.

Finally, the pain point was clear

We needed a solid, reusable, ready-to-integrate E-Commerce Engine that works across all our internal applications.

So I built one.

How I Built the E-Commerce Package (Technical Breakdown)

Here is the architectural approach I took.

1. Modular Structure

I designed it with a clean domain-driven layout:

src/
   Products/
   Categories/
   Inventory/
   Cart/
   Orders/
   Discounts/
   Services/
   Events/
   Traits/
   Admin/

Each module is independent but works together seamlessly

2. Configuration-Driven

Developers can customise almost anything via config files:

• models
• database tables
• behaviour toggles
• event hooks

This makes the package flexible enough to use across different business types.

3. Extensible Models & Contracts

I used interfaces/contracts so developers can override logic:

interface CartCalculatorInterface
{
    public function calculate(Cart $cart): CartTotals;
}

Teams can plug in custom pricing rules or tax logic.

4. Events Everywhere

Events like

ProductCreated
ProductDeleted
NotificationSent
InventoryUpdated
OrderPlaced
CartUpdated
PaymentSuccessful

This allow the host application to react and integrate easily.

5. API-ready

I structured it so that:

• API controllers
• Resource transformers
• Request validators

are all reusable and extendable.

6. Installer + Migration + Seeders

The package can be installed with:

php artisan damoscky-ecommerce:install

Making It Public: GitHub Repository

I made the package accessible for:

• Internal team members
• collaborators
• other developers that need e-commerce foundations
• open-source contribution

Anyone can download, install, and review the code.

https://github.com/Damoscky/laravel-ecommerce-package.git

How My Package Inspired My Team to Build Their Own Modules

This was the most rewarding part.

Once my team saw a well-structured and reusable e-commerce package, it sparked something:

They started building:

• a Finance module package
• an Asset Management package
• a Manufacturing package
• a Notification centre package
• a Reporting module
• a User/Role module

Suddenly, we were moving away from “project-based thinking” into modular product ecosystem thinking.

This is the kind of shift that makes teams:

• faster
• more organised
• more consistent
• more scalable

It also builds a culture of craftsmanship within engineering teams.

Lessons Learned Building My First Laravel Package

Here are my biggest takeaways:

1. A package forces you to think in reusable components
2. Package development requires cleaner architecture
3. Documentation is more important than code
4. Naming conventions matter
5. Versioning & updates become part of the discipline
6. Other developers will use your code — so it has to be clear
7. Packages multiply your impact beyond a single project

Conclusion

Building an e-commerce package was one of the best engineering decisions I made.

It improved:

• my team’s productivity
• my architectural thinking
• the quality of our projects
• the consistency of our internal systems
• and even inspired other developers to build more packages

If you work in a team that builds similar solutions repeatedly, consider building a package — it may end up transforming your workflow and empowering your developers just like it did for us.

And if anyone wants to check out the package:

GitHub: https://github.com/Damoscky/laravel-ecommerce-package.git

Feel free to fork it, play with it, or contribute 😎