Building a Gated Partner Database That Loads for Members Inside China

The Challenge: An Application With Real Users to Match

Compass is a private database of 550 vetted distributors, Tmall partners, Douyin collaborators and importers across China, the kind of partners a brand normally spends three months hunting for. People log in and work inside it every day.

That means logins, gated content, searchable profiles, filters by category and city, and a way for brands to submit a brief and get a shortlist back. It’s an application. And a fair share of the people who use it, the partners and the brand teams on the ground, sit inside China. So all of that interactivity had to stay fast and reliable from the mainland, not just from a Paris office.

The brief was clear. Build a members-only platform that feels quick and trustworthy, and make sure it performs for users behind the Great Firewall, where a single blocked dependency can break a login flow.

Client	Compass
Industry	China distributor and partner database
Scale	550 vetted partner profiles
Platform	Gated web application with member accounts
Key services	Audit, Design, Integration, China hosting, Plugins, Maintenance

The Build: Accounts, Search, and a Firewall That Breaks Things Quietly

We built the gated layer first: member accounts, login, and access control so the database stays private and only vetted partners and approved brands get in. On top of that sat the searchable directory, partners filterable by category and by city, each with a curated profile rather than a scraped contact.

The brief submission flow closes the loop. A brand describes what it needs, and the request routes to the Compass team to build a shortlist.

Then the China part. Interactive flows are exactly what fails behind the firewall, because a login or a search that quietly calls a blocked service just hangs with no error. We hosted the platform inside China, filed ICP, and tested every flow from real mainland connections until logins, searches and submissions all held up.

The Outcome: A Working Platform on Both Sides of the Border

Compass now runs as a proper gated platform. Members log in, search 550 vetted profiles, filter by city and category, and send a brief, and it all stays quick whether they’re in Shanghai or abroad.

For a service whose entire value is saving brands three months of partner hunting, the platform itself had to feel fast and dependable. It does.

“This was never going to be a brochure. People log in and actually work in it, a lot of them from inside China. The team built something that holds up under that, which is harder than it looks.”

Sophie M., Operations Lead, Compass