AMA Marketplace
Design & Development Proposal

A trust-first marketplace, built for AMA members.

Marketplace Studio is pleased to present this proposal to the Automobile Association of Canada (AMA) for the design and development of AMA Marketplace — a member-only, trust-first marketplace embedded within the AMA mobile app.

This engagement is structured in two sequential phases. Phase 1 delivers the AMA Home Services Marketplace, a focused, fast-to-market product designed to directly compete with BC's recently announced Home Services marketplace from CAA/AAA. Phase 2 follows with a Products Marketplace, expanding the platform's value proposition and supply base.

The platform will be built on Sharetribe, enhanced with Algolia for search and discovery, deployed on AWS, and integrated with AMA's proprietary member backend. Mixpanel powers product analytics and SendGrid handles transactional email delivery.

Marketplace Studio will lead design and development end-to-end with a 7-person Senior team. AMA will maintain design review authority and will embed one designated developer within the Marketplace Studio team for continuity and knowledge transfer. Design begins May 11, 2026 and Phase 1 launches August 21, 2026.

What an AMA member would do if Exchange didn't exist.

That's the true competitive set. Today, AMA members in Alberta have six imperfect options for trusted local services — and every one of them shares a weakness that AMA Exchange can decisively own.

Primary threat

Direct & adjacent competitors

Market-wide white space

Every competitor shares at least one of these structural weaknesses:

• No verified identity on both sides of the transaction
• Hidden or punishing fees that erode provider trust
• Open to anyone — no accountability floor
• Not embedded in an existing trusted member relationship
• National/global scale prioritised over local community trust

Project objectives & phased structure.

Project objectives

• Launch a Home Services marketplace before the CAA/AAA competitor reaches members
• Deliver a trust-first, member-verified experience that differentiates AMA from open marketplaces
• Build a scalable technical foundation that grows with marketplace adoption
• Establish a repeatable design and development system that accelerates Phase 2 delivery
• Integrate with AMA's proprietary member backend for verified identity and member data

Phased structure

Platform & technology

Three design milestones, six weeks.

All designs are produced by the Senior Designer (Paige) in Figma. Designs are based on the mobile AMA marketplace within the constraints of Sharetribe, adapted for desktop. Design begins May 11, 2026 and is structured around three milestone deliveries, each followed by an AMA review gate.

Design milestones

Two-sided functionality with built-in trust.

Platform / trust infrastructure

• Member verification via AMA proprietary backend — identity confirmation on signup and session creation
• Verified member badge and trust signals surfaced on provider profiles
• Reporting and flagging — listing and user-level reports with escalation path
• AMA Centre Safe Exchange Zones — nearest-Centre locator surfaced in booking and messaging flows, recommending AMA's physical Alberta locations as designated safe meetup points (a moat no open marketplace can match)
• Notification system (SendGrid) — transactional email delivery for messaging alerts, booking status changes, and review prompts, plus in-app notifications
• Product analytics (Mixpanel) — funnel tracking, behavioural event capture, and conversion data to inform Phase 2 prioritisation

Out of Phase 1 scope

• Product (goods) listings — Phase 2
• ISO ("In Search Of") listings — post-Phase 1 consideration
• Full payment processing — configuration to be confirmed with AMA
• Knowledge base and AI-assisted content quality — requires further scoping

Four build milestones across nine weeks.

Phase 1 development runs from June 15 through August 21, 2026. The work is structured around four sequential milestones with overlapping QA and continuous integration. Milestones align with the timeline in §09 and the team composition in §11.

Development milestones

AWS infrastructure for enterprise availability and security.

Deployed on AWS in place of the standard Heroku stack to meet AMA's enterprise requirements. Architecture prioritises availability, horizontal scalability, and security isolation.

Sharetribe configuration

• Custom listing types for home services (Phase 1) — goods listings added in Phase 2
• Member verification hook — triggers AMA backend check on signup and session creation
• Algolia search provider swap — replaces Sharetribe's default search
• Custom trust score signals on listing and profile views
• Reporting and moderation workflow extensions

Algolia search & discovery

• Listing index with geo-coordinates for radius and location-based search
• Real-time index updates on listing creation, edit, and status change via Sharetribe webhooks
• Category, price, availability, and trust signal filters
• No-results fallback recommendations — surface nearby or related listings
• Search analytics — top queries, zero-result queries, click-through rates

AMA backend integration

The AMA proprietary backend is a critical dependency for member verification. Marketplace Studio will design the integration layer in close collaboration with the AMA team, with the embedded AMA developer serving as primary liaison.

• Member authentication — SSO or token-based handshake between AMA app session and Marketplace
• Membership verification check — confirms active status before granting marketplace access
• Member data read — pulls name, membership tier, and tenure to pre-populate marketplace profile
• Webhook or event bus alignment — to be confirmed with AMA dev team

Testing as a first-class deliverable.

Testing is treated as a first-class deliverable given the trust-sensitive nature of the platform. The Senior Manual QA Engineer and Senior Automated QA Engineer collaborate from Week 6 onward, embedding testing into every milestone.

An accelerated 15-week schedule.

Design begins May 11, 2026. Development begins in parallel toward the end of the design phase to compress overall delivery. Phase 1 launches August 21, 2026.

Project Gantt — May 11 to August 21, 2026

Products marketplace, built on validated foundations.

Phase 2 expands AMA Marketplace to include a peer-to-peer products (goods) marketplace. It is built directly on the validated trust infrastructure, design system, and AWS architecture from Phase 1 — dramatically reducing design and development effort.

Preliminary Phase 2 scope

• Product listing creation — physical goods with condition, photos, pricing, and location
• ISO ("In Search Of") listings — members post what they are looking for
• Open-to-offers pricing — seller sets a minimum; buyers submit offers within parameters
• Image ordering on listing creation
• Phase 2 Algolia enhancements — indexes extended for product-specific attributes
• Expanded trust score inputs incorporating marketplace transaction history
• Knowledge base and AI-assisted content quality tooling (scoped post-Phase 1)
• Full payment and checkout flow (scope confirmed with AMA prior to Phase 2 kickoff)
• AMA Rewards Dollars integration — support for transacting with Rewards Dollars within Exchange, tying marketplace activity into the broader member ecosystem and creating switching costs no competitor can replicate
• Expanded Safe Exchange Zone scheduling — schedule meetups at AMA Centres directly from the platform with notifications, calendar holds, and arrival confirmations

A 7-person Senior team, embedded with AMA.

Collaboration model

Project communication

• Weekly written status update from Marketplace Studio to AMA stakeholders
• Dedicated Slack channel for daily async communication between both teams
• Bi-weekly video calls for milestone reviews and blocker resolution
• All design files maintained in a shared Figma workspace accessible to AMA

Total project investment.

Phase 1 is delivered by the 7-person Senior team across design, product management, full-stack development, infrastructure, and QA, with a separate pool reserved for collaboration, iteration, and documentation. All amounts in CAD.

Direct delivery team

Phase 1 is staffed by the following 7 Senior roles, each contributing across the design, development, and QA tracks defined in §04–08.

Collaboration, iteration & documentation pool

A separate pool is reserved for work that doesn't fit role-specific delivery — design revisions beyond the first round per milestone, cross-team collaboration sessions, ad-hoc documentation, knowledge transfer to AMA's embedded developer, and discovery work on TBD scope items.

The pool is drawn down against actual logged hours and reported in the weekly status update. Unused balance can be applied toward Phase 2 or credited back at engagement close — Marketplace Studio does not bill against time not worked.

Payment schedule

Payment is structured around an engagement deposit, equal monthly invoices during the project term, and a delivery holdback released on AMA's acceptance of Phase 1 launch.

What's included

• All design and development for the confirmed Phase 1 scope defined in §04 and §05
• AWS architecture, provisioning, and infrastructure-as-code setup per §07
• AMA backend integration, Sharetribe configuration, Algolia search, Mixpanel analytics, and SendGrid notifications
• Full automated testing suite per §08, including security and accessibility validation
• Pre-launch UAT support and a one-week post-launch monitoring window
• One round of design revisions per milestone (additional revisions drawn from the iteration pool)
• Weekly written status updates and bi-weekly milestone review calls

What's excluded

• TBD scope items — Payments & checkout and Knowledge base / AI-assisted support are quoted separately once AMA confirms direction
• Pass-through costs — AWS infrastructure, Sharetribe licence, Algolia, Mixpanel, SendGrid, and other third-party SaaS subscriptions are billed directly to AMA
• Post-launch operational support beyond the one-week monitoring window — covered by a separate ongoing engagement
• Phase 2 design and development — scoped under a separate proposal following Phase 1 launch

How we get started.

To proceed with this engagement, Marketplace Studio recommends the following actions: