The client
The Exclusive Society is an invitation-only network for the UAE's nightlife and hospitality scene: restaurants, beach clubs, and venues on one side, creators and influencers on the other. Businesses put up offers - a table, an event, an experience - and influencers deliver the content and reach that make it worth their while. The brand promises exclusivity; the product had to enforce it.
The brief
Two-sided marketplaces are really two products wearing one brand. An influencer opens the app to browse offers, apply, and prove the collaboration happened. A venue opens the same app to publish offers, vet applicants, and approve the content that comes back. Neither side should ever see the other's machinery - and both had to feel like the luxury brand the Society sells.
We built the mobile product end to end in React Native with Expo: one codebase, two user experiences, built for iOS and Android.
Two apps in one
The app routes each account into its own world. Influencers get a discovery feed of offers, saved lists, applications, and active deals; businesses get a dashboard, offer management, and applicant review. Even onboarding respects the split: a business signs up on a single page, while influencers walk a multi-step flow that ends in a vetting queue rather than instant access.
Under the surface the split is real, not cosmetic: separate route groups, separate navigation, one shared design language - a dark, gold-on-black theme system that keeps every screen unmistakably on-brand.
Trust as a feature
Exclusivity is a workflow, not a tagline. No influencer sees a single offer until an admin has reviewed and approved the profile - the app holds them on a pending screen, and a rejection is an explicit state rather than a silent void.
The same discipline runs through every deal. An application moves through explicit statuses - pending, approved, rejected, completed, disputed, invited, declined - and closing a deal requires proof: influencers submit the content they made, and the business approves it in the app. Realtime in-app notifications and push notifications keep both sides current the moment anything changes.
A modern stack, invisible to the user.
The screens read as luxury; the machinery underneath is what keeps two user types, live deals, and notifications in sync.
Supabase
Auth, Postgres, and storage in one backend: profiles, offers, applications, and content proof all live in a single source of truth.
Realtime notifications
In-app notifications ride Supabase's realtime subscriptions - an application status changes, and both sides see it immediately.
Expo push notifications
Deals move even when the app is closed: push notifications bring users back at the moments that matter.
EAS build pipeline
Expo Application Services builds both store binaries from the same codebase - no parallel iOS and Android projects to maintain.
