Tarateeb

I've been building quietly for the past several months, and I wanted to write this introduction post to share what

I'm working on, the insight behind it, and where I am today.

The problem I kept seeing

Cosmetics manufacturers in the Arab world — small and mid-sized brands making real products — are running their entire operations across four tools: WhatsApp for team coordination, Excel for inventory and formulas, paper forms for quality records, and a local accounting tool completely disconnected from everything else.

This isn't an edge case. It's the norm.

Every time they try to scale — a second product line, a compliance audit, a new market — this stack breaks down. The problem is that existing ERPs aren't designed for them. SAP is overkill and unaffordable. Odoo requires months of configuration and a consultant. Neither speaks Arabic natively, neither understands FEFO inventory for perishable raw materials, and neither has cosmetics-specific workflows like formulation version control or batch-level regulatory traceability.

There's also no Arabic-first ERP platform for manufacturing anywhere in the market. The MENA region has a rapidly growing cosmetics sector — Saudi Vision 2030 is pushing domestic manufacturing hard — and not a single purpose-built tool for it.

What I built

I'm building Tarateeb, which means "arrangement" in Arabic. It's a cloud-native manufacturing intelligence platform purpose-built for small and mid-sized cosmetics manufacturers in MENA (and eventually food, pharma, nutraceuticals).

What's live today:

1. Multi-tenant platform with role-based access control and invitation-based team management

2. Product formulation management with full version history and ingredient BOM

3. Raw materials and inventory with FEFO batch allocation

4. Work order creation and assignment

5. Sales transactions, invoicing, and customer management

6. Multilingual: English, Arabic (RTL), Czech

7. Installable as a PWA

The stack is Next.js 15, TypeScript, PostgreSQL/Prisma, Clerk auth, hosted on Vercel.

Where I am

Honest answer: pre-revenue, actively working toward first paying customer. I've been heads-down building because I wanted to show up to the market with something real, not a mockup.

The hardest part so far hasn't been the code. It's been building something complex enough to handle real manufacturing workflows without it becoming another Odoo product, so flexible that it requires an implementation project to do anything.

That tension — depth vs. simplicity — is the core design challenge I'm still working through.

Why I'm posting this

I want to build this in public from here on. I'll share what I'm learning, what's working, and what's not, including the uncomfortable parts. If you're building vertical SaaS, a B2B product, or something in the manufacturing/supply chain space, I'd love to connect.

And if you know anyone running a cosmetics or personal care manufacturing operation in the Arab world — I'd love an intro.