I'm Felix Tellmann, a Fullstack developer.
I love writing code that takes things next level creating highly performant websites, automated API integrations, building my own dev-tools, and creating stunning user-experiences that makes you feel WOW!.I am always keen to learn and explore new technologies, frameworks and programming languages. Currently, I'm learning about Astro and Replicache.
I'm a Cape Town based Web Developer and Entrepreneur. My focus area for the past few years has been front-end development with Next.js, Typescript and TailwindCSS to create beautiful user- and developer experiences that bring delight.
I’ve spent most of my life deeply interested in technology and food, continuously building things with both. As a teenager, I was a classic computer nerd, spending most of my times messing with the computer, doing 1 of 4 things: Modding games and figuring things out. Tinkering with hardware, building computers. Developing websites with FrontPage 98 and Flash. And of course, playing games.
Most of that is still true today.
Born
In Viersen Germany, a few days early.
Online
I was fortunate to explore the internet at the age of 10 using a 28.9KBit modem. I was absolutely mind blown 🤯
First Computer
My brother and I were building our first computer from scratch, using my stepdads old hardware and buying some new components. 133Mhz Pentium with 8mb ram 😂
First line of code
My stepdad Franz thought me programming ⌨, building a calculator 🧮 and a racing game 👾 🏎 with Delphi and Pascal
Visit to SF
Exploring the tech world as a teenager. I bought a brand new Laser Mouse 🖱 at the Metreon downtown San Fransisco.
Gaming
I got into Gaming 🕹 and Lan Parties, playing Half-life, Diablo I & StarCraft (when not struggling to setup the 10MBit network)
Web development
I build my first websites using MS FrontPage 98. Anyone remembers Frames? 🙃
Game Modding
I got into game Modding and started experimenting, mostly with Counter Strike & the HL engine.
First Visit to SA
I went to South Africa for the first time, visiting St Francis Bay on the Garden Route.
Graduated High School
I completed my last three years at a High-school for Technology and Media in Germany and shortly after found myself working different jobs, trying to figure out what I wanted to do.
Lost Teenager
After High school, I was totally lost in direction, thinking that my skills in game modding/web dev weren't any useful.
Second visit to SA
I visited South Africa for the second time. This time, exploring Cape Town and I totally fell in love with it.
Planning my Career
This was a big step for me at the age of 21. I decided to take on a different career path, jumping straight into my other passion for food & hospitality, leaving the tech world as a hobby.
Move to South Africa
I decided to pack up my things in Germany and start my Career in Hospitality in Cape Town, to gain international experience.
Learning English
I took a deep dive into learning English within 3 months in South Africa, going from hating languages to 100% native.
Short-term Study
I started at the International Hotel School for a 6 month adjustment course.
Germany vs South Africa
I moved back to Germany in july 2008, to start an apprenticeship as a Chef.
Financial Crisis
My apprenticeship was cut short, as the establishment closed down as retrenching all apprentices as the Financial crisis hit Germany.
Full-time Study
I once again, moved back to South Africa. This time to stay for at least 3 years to study Cheffing & Hospitality full-time.
World Cup 2010
It was amazing to be in Cape Town during the World Cup 2010 in SA. Germany vs Argentina - 4:0
Working on Cruise Line
Spend 4 months traveling the seas onboard of the Yachts of Seabourn. Visited many countries in North America & The Caribbean while working as a Waiter.
Graduated Varsity
I graduated with three Higher National Diplomas Summa Cum Laude, covering all aspects I needed to know to one day open my own restaurant
Getting into Management
I started as a waiter and got promoted shortly after to Assistant Restaurant Manager at Salt Restaurant. Developing some great connections.
Kitima Restaurant
Joined the Best Asian Restaurant in South Africa as a Restaurant Manager overseeing a team of 50 employees.
Training & Development
I took on a specialized role focusing on training & development of the team to reach their full potential.
Reconnecting the dots
I was exposed to a lot of IT & Web dev work for the restaurant. I reconnected a lot of my teenage skill with IT and learned more about POS systems.
Personal Website
I decided to build my site with WordPress, showing a gallery and info about me. Unfortunately, I didn't use Git yet and lost the source code on a old HDD.
Restaurant Consultant
I left my full-time position early in 2015 to focus on a Postgraduate diploma at UCT. I continued my work in a Consulting Role.
Co-founded SimplyStuck
Started a Vinyl sticker business, while exploring the very interesting customer segment of students 👨 🎓 It was part study, part real business, but somehow eventually faded & failed as we had a team of 6 co-founders. Stick to 1 or 2 if you can. 😉
Got Engaged
I asked my then girlfriend, Elizabeth, to marry me. She said yes! I took her out for a super romantic dinner and popped the question in a full restaurant.
Graduated Postgraduate at UCT
I went back to University in 2015 to advance with a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Management & Entrepreneurship. 📚 👓
Got Married
If this Year wasn't enough. Liz and I decided to have a small ceremony with the closes friends & family at a beautiful wine farm in Cape Town.
Opening a Restaurant
After graduation, I got straight back to work. This time as General Manager, opening a brand new Restaurant in Cape Town (for a private investor)
Project Management & IT
I opened Raya Kitchen over 2 months including construction and hiring a new team from scratch, and setting the POS & IT operations.
Coding Skills
I pursued my interests in web development & tech professionally. I did a deep dive completing the FreeCodeCamp Front-end & Back-end Certifications.
Tech + Restaurant
I started Smart-up Online. An online training platform/SaaS for restaurant owners & managers to train their staff.
Food Truck, almost.
My Wife and I were both getting excited to start our own Food Truck and planned out all the details. However, the stars were not aligned for it. We shall get back to it!!
Full-time Web Development
I found my first clients to work on the side, which quickly grew to full-time freelancing occupation, where I got hooked on React.js
Shopify Dev
Partnered up to start a small Shopify E-commerce web design studio.
First Custom Project
I've built AlphabetPIX for a client as my first web-app, learning tons on a new tech domain.
Move to Knysna
My Wife and I made the decision to move to Knysna on the Garden Route to open a Restaurant.
Start-up Funding
The first experience acquiring start-up funding for our restaurant. You gotta move early and fast, as everyone else will slow you down.
The Burger Exchange
Its always been a dream Now we took the steps to make it a reality. A 200 seater Restaurant with our own concept of a trendy upmarket Burger Joint.
Namibia Holidays
We survived our first holiday season at the restaurant and took a one week holiday which was simply mind blowing.
Restaurant Upgrade
We upgraded the concept to the fit market environment & shifted focus to also include a variety of wood fired grills. 🥩🔥
Smart-Up 2.0
I took a data driven approach to create new training material for Smart-Up Online, and to use internally at the restaurant. Including a deep dive into MySQL & Oracle DB.
Season 2
We grew the restaurant consistently, with the best season and a blast of a staff party to finish off the holiday times.
Covid 19
From a successful restaurant to closing our doors in a matter of weeks. Its been a great journey, the uncertainty of corona and the lockdown have clarified major life-changing questions. Answering them became easy overnight.
Back to Web Dev
I restarted my freelancing Web dev and got back in touch with clients, jumping into the booming ecommerce train.
felixtellmann.com
Finally after a few months of design & redesigns, and other projects in the background, I got my new (now old) page up and running.
Dev tools
I created created and maintain two open source dev tools: fx-style and shopify-ftp-access.
Otter Trail
I went on a 5 day adventure hike carrying 15kg of gear & provisions for 45km on the Garden Route
New Office
We moved into our new office on Bree street with a stunning balcony and some great neighbours.
ClickUpload
I lead the creation of ClickUpload, a public Shopify app that allows users to upload files with their orders.
shopify-typed-node-api
I upgraded shopify-node-api to be fully typesafe and published it as an alternative to the non TS version.
Backend API integrations
Over the year I got heavily involved in some backend custom integrations, building solutions with AWS for our clients.
Lunalemon
We've launched LunaLemon as a brand to reach a more international audience for app & headless ecommerce solutions.
LunaTag
The second Shopify App that's published in the App store allows marchants to Tag their product on any image on their store.
Shopify-cms
I always wanted to create a Shopify Theme that was fully React based, I finally figured it out and build shopify-cms along the way.
Checkout my work.
Lunatag
I've created a Shopify App that allows users to add Tags to any image on their Shopify site to upsell products. The app is available on the Shopify App store and works for all Shopify themes.
Tellmann
Tellmann Shopify Ecommerce Agency Website. I've built the site to establish a basis to find new Web Development projects and promote Shopify services.
ClickUpload
ClickUpload enables Shopify store owners to let customers upload files to their orders. The Shopify App supports all file types and sizes. All files are linked to the order and can be downloaded easily.
Kids Living
Large scale Ecommerce website for a South African based client with 3 brick & mortar locations and over 3000 products.
Lunalemon
Headless Web agency site utilizing Shopify's theme editor as a custom CMS. The site showcases my client oriented projects and promotes web development services.
shopify-ftp-access
Shopify-ftp-access is an Open Source utility which acts as a proxy that allows you to use any FTP program while running the CLI to connect upload/download any shopify Theme files
Erply Egypt eInvoicing API
This custom App runs on 5 min Cron Job to process any incoming sales data for a retail chain in Egypt, processing each invoice on the eInvoicing portal. The app includes an internal dashboard for any manual processing required.
Zoom Printing
I've built the Shopify site based on the Warehouse theme, with lots of custom integrations to enable up to 1000 product variants and add-on sales. I've migrated the client from a old legacy self-hosted server, building my own web-scrapers along the way.
Vend Takealot API
Similar to the Erply Takealot integration, this app runs a scheduled script to ensure that sales & inventory levels are synchronized between two sales channels.
Aiko
I built a fully custom designed Shopify site, utilizing shopify-cms in a non-headless way, to ensure type safety throughout the project using Shopify Liquid templates.
Shopify Courier Guy API
An integration to connect sales directly to the popular shipping provided Courier Guy, reducing the need to manually process incoming orders for fulfillment.
shopify-cms
Shopify-cms is another Open Source CLI that I've built. The package helps building a site with the Shopify Theme Editor as a Headless CMS and get fully typed data.
Erply Takealot sales API
I've built an API integration to process inventory levels and sales between the two POS/Ecommerce platforms for an internal client.
AlphabetPIX
Custom build Shopify-site / Web-app that allows customers to create their own named picture frame and generate image files on the fly for their checkout.
shopify-typed-node-api
Shopify-typed-node-api is an extension to the popular shopify-node-api, adding typescript support for all Rest & GraphQL endpoints provided by Shopify.
Shopify Vend product API
A custom integration, ensuring that relevant product data is kept synchronized between Vend POS and Shopify, based on a webhook architecture to push updates.
BushScarf
I worked with Bushscarf to develop their Shopify Website covering aspects from product photography, product image editing and product content creation.
Broadway Jewellers
My work with Broadway Jewellers started with migrating their site form WordPress to Shopify, I also covered an array of aspects from inventory management, digital marketing, SEO web solutions, web design upgrade to custom API solutions.
fx-style
I've created fx-style as a package to standardize my own code style across all projects, while minimizing devDependencies for each project.
Shopify DearSystems API
This integration allows my client to effectively synchronize their inventory between Dear and Shopify with multiple store locations and a complex VAT setup.
Waraq Health
I worked with Waraq to successfully develop their Shopify site, covering aspects from product image editing and content research and creation.
Vend Shopify Omnisend API
A custom integration to collect & update customer information for OmniSend email marketing, utilizing in-store (via QR code) and online sign-ups.