Amazon is undeniably the shopping destination for many people now, especially with delivery options becoming faster and more convenient. But what if you just wanted to see if a particular item was available a few blocks from your office?
A new app called ineed aims to help you do just that with a search engine that lets you find products of all kinds across millions of brick-and-mortar stores across the country.
The app is available on Apple's App Store, Amazon's Appstore and Google Play, and it's being developed by Boston-based RetailJump, a relatively new retail advertising tech startup that started in Detroit but moved to Boston when co-founder and CEO Jeff Couger, a Michigan State University alum, saw that the city had a larger concentration of retail activity.
When you search for a product on ineed — like, say, deodorant — the app shows a map with pins of all the stores that carry the item. You can then scroll downwards to see the prices of products of each store and how far away each store is. Hitting the "navigate" link on any item will open Google Maps to give you directions to that store.
Couger told BostInno that RetailJump has been able to add so much inventory from millions of stores by plugging into their inventory management software, collecting data from their websites using web crawlers or by having a store upload a spreadsheet of its inventory if it doesn't have its own management software.
Ineed isn't intended to bring in any money for RetailJump, Couger said, but it's instead meant to gather data on shopper demographics and preferences, along with geographic data, that the company will use to try to sell targeted advertising and marketing services to retailers and product manufacturers.
For Couger, the combination of ineed's analytical capabilities and RetailJump's advertising and marketing services is about to help even the playing field between brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce sites.
"It makes the experience better and increases the ability for retail stores and brick-and-mortar stores to compete with e-commerce," Couger said. He said he also wants to eventually expand into enabling delivery for these stores.
RetailJump employs five people, and it's supported with a $25,000 angel investment from Earl Gallegos, vice chairman of the board at insurance tech company Majesco and principal at consulting firm Earl Gallegos Management Corporation.
