Edition-Originale.com — Rare book e-commerce platform

Context

Edition Originale (Librairie Le Feu Follet) is one of France’s premier rare book dealers, with a catalog of over 76,000 items (30,000 currently for sale) spanning rare books, autographs, manuscripts, art, and photography. I took over the project after two previous agencies had abandoned the redesign, restarting development from scratch.

Challenge

This is not standard e-commerce. Every item is unique and never comes back in stock. The data model is unusually complex: authors and publishers have published under different names, merged identities, or used pseudonyms, requiring a flexible entity resolution system. The platform needed advanced search across dozens of criteria, a daily alert system notifying collectors of new arrivals matching their preferences, multilingual content (FR/EN), and a smooth purchasing experience for collectors worldwide.

Approach

The project started with a scripting phase to automate the transformation of legacy data into the new format. I then designed and built the entire platform, handling both frontend (Next.js with SSR) and backend (Directus as headless CMS). Key technical challenges:

• Data migration: Automated scripting to transform and import the legacy catalog into the new data model
• Search: Custom instant search widgets powered by Meilisearch, enabling faceted search across the full 30k+ catalog with sub-second response times
• Data modeling: Collaborative design sessions with the client to define the architecture for authors, publishers, editions, and their complex relationships
• Alert system: A notification engine that evaluates dozens of criteria every morning to send personalized new arrivals to each collector
• AI translation: The multilingual site contained thousands of poor-quality legacy translations. Calibrated an AI model then automatically translated 30,000+ product listings
• SEO migration: Post-redesign SEO migration plan to preserve and improve the site’s search engine positioning
• Performance: SSR optimization for a catalog of this scale, balancing rich content with fast page loads

Result

The platform is live at edition-originale.com and serves collectors internationally. The team manages their entire catalog, editorial content, and business operations through the tools I built. The site handles thousands of daily visitors with a growing catalog.