Magento

Take the following example…

A gallery owner sells one-of-a-kind artwork within his high-street store and on-line through his website. As an item can be bought in person or on-line, there is the possibility that an item may be sold before the store owner has the chance to remove the item from the website.

What would be ideal is a purchase process along the lines of:

1) A customer browses the website and adds items to their basket.
2) On checkout, the store owner is notified of the customers interest in the selected items.
3) The store owner is then able to confirm if the item is still available and, if so, reserve it for the customer.
4) If the item is available, the customer can then pay for the item using the normal payment gateways.

Does that sound at all possible?

Theoretically this is possible. It will require the Store Owner to be 1) online 2) very responsive as the timeframe could be seconds to confirm availability

In any case, it will require some custom modules to be developed.

In an ideal world the store owner would respond to an “item request” as soon as it happened - but in reality it would more likely be hours rather than seconds (or days, if the request occurred over the weekend).

Its a case of adding a extra step to the work flow - before an item can be paid for, the request needs to be approved by the owner.

I shall have to install Magento and take a look under the hood myself. Thanks.

Is the framework flexible enough to allow me to modify the process?