MediaWiki + OpenCart = A community run store, any interest?

We're a services company and our primary focus is on services and not so much pushing product around. We originally ran our store on razor thin margins to only cover costs, but it soon became apparent with the more products we stocked, the more orders we took that it was turning into a lot more work - mainly administrative work.

To combat this, as we really don't have the people in-house (nor want to, given I.T. product margins) we don't want to dedicate too much time in running a store. So, we created a community powered set of extensions for OpenCart and MediaWiki so the community runs the store. So what do you get when you combine MediaWiki + OpenCart integration? You get this:


The wiki page for an example product.


Products are managed in MediaWiki, via the use of Semantic properties and this is ultimately how the product looks in the store.


To add (or update) a product in OpenCart, you use our OpenCart sync extension in MediaWiki to sync to the shopping cart.

This MediaWiki extension also performs all business rule validation, i.e. it checks the buy price, sell price, etc. It will also create the manufacturer into OpenCart if it doesn't already exist and a few other cool party tricks.

Wanna play?:
Feel free to play around with the Example Product in the Product sandbox category.

Take note that any edits won't show up automatically to the store, an administrator or community bureaucrat (MediaWiki rights management) need to approve the edit/addition. However I am here for another 8 hours, so I'll approve any edits to that Example Product pretty swiftly.

Wiki: http://www.macexperts.com.au/shop/wiki/ ... (EXAMPLE1)
Product page: http://www.macexperts.com.au/shop/produ ... duct_id=94

Design features:

• All product data is handled via the wiki, that is categorisation of products, product relation, buy pricing, sell pricing, images, additional images.
• Suppliers, product manufacturers or just the community to maintain all product data, not us!
• We've turned the points system into a community bonuses system, where the profit from each item sale will be split with community members (this is still in progress, mostly figuring out the logistics of how to pay people and how much to pay them)
• Automatic product ordering and product update feeds from suppliers go straight into the wiki, not OpenCart - meaning if we ever throw out OpenCart in favour of another solution, we only have to re-write the MediaWiki -> Cart sync tool and not all our supplier tools, product feeds, etc.

Rationality behind such a design choose:

• We get way too many suppliers and manufacturers wanting us to stock their iPod case or something - we really don't have the time to spend 10 minutes adding the product, but now, the manufacturer can add the damn product themselves!

We still need to work on a lot of policies (such as supplier management, etc), but as we flesh out this idea more and more and take on feedback we expect our idea to turn into a full fledged community suite. We're even experimenting with the idea of letting the community manage sales anonymously since our interface with suppliers is all completely automated.

What I am interested to know is, any comments? are we crazy? or what is OpenCart's community interest in us releasing our extensions as a commercial OpenCart extension?

Seems like an interesting idea -- could have potential.

This is exactly what I'm looking for!