Who needs to know what’s on the shelf?
The same connection could answer different questions for different people. Some of this runs today, and most of it doesn’t yet. If one of these is your problem, we’d like to hear how you’d use it.
Marketplaces
Fewer promises a shelf can’t keep.
A customer orders the last bottle a store sold twenty minutes ago. The courier arrives, the item is gone, and everyone pays for it. In the other direction, an item marked unavailable sits on the shelf, unsold, because nobody updated a listing.
An illustrative example.
What the network could offer
- Evidence that an item marked unavailable is selling again
- Signals about what’s moving at stores with no usable integration
- A way to reach independent stores without a register integration for each
At connected stores, a scan of an item marked unavailable already helps put it back on delivery listings. The wider signal is what we’d like to build with you.
Brands
See past the sell-in.
A new product goes into independent stores across a metro. You know what shipped. You find out what sold months later, if at all, and mostly from the chains.
An illustrative example.
What the network could offer
- Where a product is moving, and how fast, across independent stores
- Whether a promotion changed anything nearby
- Which neighborhoods are picking up a new product first
Not available yet. It would be shared in the aggregate unless a store agrees otherwise, and subject to the rules for each category, including alcohol.
Distributors
Know before the rep walks in.
A store sold through on Saturday. The rep finds the gap on Tuesday. Those three days don’t show up in any report.
An illustrative example.
What the network could offer
- Earlier signals of demand by territory
- Better-informed routes and replenishment
- A view of movement across stores that report nothing today
Not available yet. We’re looking for distributors who want to help work out what would be useful.
Data and strategic partners
A source that didn’t exist.
Most data about independent retail comes from the stores whose systems were easiest to connect. Stores on older registers, or on none you can reach, stay out of the picture.
An illustrative example.
What the network could offer
- Signals that don’t depend on a store’s register vendor
- Combining observations with your own product and place data
- Clear terms about what can and can’t be shared
Early. Anything here depends on what stores have agreed to and on the rules for each category.
AI agents
Software can’t buy what it can’t find.
Someone asks an assistant to get a phone charger delivered in the next hour. The assistant knows every warehouse on earth and nothing about the store down the street.
An illustrative example.
What the network could offer
- Asking where a product is likely available nearby
- Getting back how sure that answer is, and how recent
- Eventually, acting on it through a store’s existing channels
This is the long-term idea, not a product. There is no agent interface today.