Vendor Guide

Everything you can do as a Vendor on DoCurious -- creating challenges, managing events, and growing your reach.

What You Can Do

• Create and manage challenge listings on the DoCurious marketplace
• Host scheduled events for your challenges (workshops, group outings, camps)
• Track engagement analytics across all your challenges
• Manage orders and fulfillment for paid challenges
• Connect a Stripe account for payment processing
• Build a team with Owner, Admin, and Editor roles
• Access the Vendor Resource Hub for best-practice guides

The vendor role is additive -- becoming a vendor does not replace your existing roles. A teacher-vendor still has the teacher dashboard, a parent-vendor still sees the parent view. You switch between contexts using the context switcher.

Getting Started

Any DoCurious user can apply to become a vendor. New users without an account can also apply directly.

1. Navigate to Become a Challenge Provider from your profile settings or the Vendor Program page.
2. Complete the application form (business name, type, contact info, description of services).
3. Your application enters the DoCurious staff review queue (target: 3-5 business days).
4. On approval, you gain access to the vendor dashboard via the context switcher and proceed to the 4-step onboarding wizard.

The onboarding wizard collects your profile and billing info, commission terms, venue details, and a final review. Total time is roughly 5 minutes. See Onboarding Flows for the full step-by-step breakdown.

Your Dashboard

The vendor dashboard is your home base, accessed through the context switcher under My Vendor Account.

Summary cards at the top show Total Challenges, Completions, Average Rating, and Pending Review count.

Primary navigation sections:

Section	What It Does
My Challenges	View, filter, edit, duplicate, and archive your challenge listings
Events	Schedule and manage hosted events with registration tracking
Orders	Track orders, fulfillment status, and process refunds
Analytics	View engagement metrics, revenue estimates, and top-challenge rankings
Profile & Settings	Update your vendor profile, logo, social links, and manage your team

Key Features

Challenge Creation

Create challenges through a 6-tab form covering Basics, Details, Media & Location, Purchase & Fulfillment, Structure, and Settings. You set the title, description, categories, difficulty, milestones, pricing, venue info, verification requirements, and XP configuration.

Every challenge goes through staff review before going live. Your first 3 challenges receive extra scrutiny. Once live, cosmetic edits (description, images) can be submitted anytime, but structural edits (milestones, difficulty, materials) are locked after the first user starts the challenge.

See Challenge System and Vendor Portal for the full field list and status lifecycle.

Event Management

Vendors offering hosted challenges can create and manage events with date, time, location, capacity, registration deadlines, and cancellation policies. Events progress through states: Scheduled, Full, Closed, Cancelled, and Completed.

The events page shows upcoming and past events with registration counts against capacity. See Vendor Portal for event fields and management details.

Orders & Fulfillment

Track all orders for your paid challenges in a filterable table. Each order shows the order ID, challenge, customer name, date, amount, and status (Pending, Processing, Fulfilled, Refunded). Actions include viewing details, marking orders as fulfilled, and processing refunds.

Summary cards show total orders, pending fulfillment, completed count, and total revenue.

Analytics

The analytics dashboard provides 8 key metrics: total views, completions, estimated revenue, average rating, active students, repeat rate, conversion rate, and average completion time. Monthly trend charts and a ranked top-challenges list help you understand performance over time.

All metrics are aggregates with a minimum threshold of 10 users -- no individual user data is ever exposed. See Vendor Portal for the full analytics breakdown.

Stripe Connect

Vendors connect a Stripe account for payment processing. The planned flow is:

1. Click Connect Stripe Account in vendor settings.
2. Complete Stripe Connect onboarding (redirects to Stripe).
3. Your Stripe account ID is stored and linked to your vendor profile.
4. A status endpoint monitors connection health.

NOTE

The Stripe Connect UI is not yet live in the frontend prototype. The API endpoints are defined and the database stores real Stripe account IDs, but the onboarding flow is pending backend integration.

Permissions Summary

Action	Vendor (Owner)	Team Admin	Team Editor	Platform Admin
Access vendor dashboard	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create challenges	Yes	Yes	Yes	No (uses admin panel)
Edit own challenges	Yes	Yes	Yes	--
Archive challenges	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Create and manage events	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
View own analytics	Yes	Yes	Read-only	Yes (all vendors)
Update vendor profile	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Manage team members	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
View other vendors' analytics	No	No	No	Yes
Access individual user data	No	No	No	No
Review Track Records	No	No	No	No (staff only)

Vendor Types

DoCurious does not enforce formal vendor categories, but vendors typically fall into five types:

Type	Description	Examples
Activity Providers	Businesses offering hands-on experiences	Pottery studios, climbing gyms, cooking schools, nature guides
Educators	Teachers or curriculum designers	Structured learning challenges, classroom activity kits
Individuals	Hobbyists, experts, or creators sharing skills	Craft tutorials, music lessons, photography walks
Nonprofits	Organizations promoting community engagement	Park cleanups, environmental action, public service challenges
Event Organizers	Groups that run scheduled group activities	Workshops, camps, group outings, community events

All vendor types go through the same application, review, and onboarding process.

Related Pages

• Vendor Portal -- Full technical reference for the vendor portal
• Challenge System -- Challenge creation rules, fields, and lifecycle
• Explore & Discovery -- How users find your challenges
• Onboarding Flows -- Detailed vendor onboarding steps
• Accounts & Authentication -- Context switcher and role management