For decades, Kontji Anthony’s father, John, ran his own small business in New York. Called Consolidated Appliance Services, it repaired equipment in commercial kitchens. His first client was the Waldorf Astoria.
But the work came with challenges, as he relied heavily on sourcing inventory. Anthony remembers working for the business when she was young, being in hotel restaurants, and seeing her father contact manufacturers to find and order necessary parts for repairs.
John has since passed on, and these days, Anthony is an evening news anchor with local TV station Action News 5. In addition to her journalism career, however, she’s creating an app — one that could help not just consumers, but companies like her father’s.
“For me it’s personal,” she said. “If he had this, it would have transformed his business; he would have been able to source parts [faster]. It would have sped up his ability to run his business.”
The app is named Youdle — “You,” plus a “D” for data, an “L” for location, and an “E” for engagement — and it’s set to launch Oct. 1. The goal is to help shoppers quickly find products they need in nearby stores, while also providing a boon for brick-and-mortar businesses; helping them efficiently source inventory; and lure customers to their locations.
“We don’t want people to always go to Amazon to get everything,” Anthony said. “If it’s right down the street, why wouldn’t they get it there?”
The app, she believes, could help rebuild “Main Street America.” And the idea for it stems from COVID-19.
'We've got to be ready.'
Early in the pandemic, Anthony was on the phone with her sister Aurora, who lives in her hometown of New Rochelle, New York. New Rochelle was one of the first U.S. victims of COVID’s rampant spread, and already, her sister told her, store shelves were empty.
Anthony hung up the phone; her stomach hurt. "What happened there," she thought, "is going to happen here. We've got to be ready for this."
Spurred to action, she created a Facebook group, titled Product Sightings, where, amid a mightily struggling supply chain and item shortages, people could let others know when they did see products they needed.
This store has toilet paper in stock, someone would say, this other place has Lysol.
The day she made the group, Anthony said, 200 people joined. A week later, there were 2,000. Now, Product Sightings has over 33,000 members, and is still regularly used, with activity peaking during certain periods — back-to-school season, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve. In February, when the surge of winter storms caused pipeline breaks and a boil water advisory, the group became a haven for people seeking water bottles.
Product Sightings’ enduring popularity and utility led Anthony to realize its wide-reaching potential. So, she decided take the concept and create the app Youdle — which is now just a month away from release.
'If a tree fell in a forest'
Developing the app with Anthony are her sisters Aurora and Johnita — who both ran her father’s business for years — and Taiwo Stanback, a Yale graduate who’s worked for companies like Instacart and California-based Robby Technologies.
The team asked 50 local businesses what their biggest pain points during the pandemic were, and each mentioned getting customers into their store. The app should help mitigate that issue.
“[It’s like] if a tree fell in a forest, and it didn’t make a sound,” Anthony said. “We’re giving the sound. We’re saying, ‘This is here guys.’”
If that tree-falling analogy doesn’t quite explain the function of the app to you, here’s another way to describe it.
Let’s say there’s a business owner who’s having a sale on candles. They can take a picture of the candles, note the price, select a category — Home Goods, in this case — and type in a hashtag, like #candles.
On the consumer side, if someone is looking to buy a candle, they can search “candles,” and on the app’s map, nearby postings about candles will pop up.
“I can see anywhere around me where someone’s posted a candle,” Anthony said.
Both businesses and consumers can post information and photos of products they see in stores — which Anthony calls “shelfies” — and the app also has a timeout feature. Since what’s at a shop one day might not be there the next day, posts can expire.
The app isn’t limited to shoppers and small companies, either. Larger retailers, like Kroger, can use it too.
“The community, the merchants, and the retailers are all populating the app, so that you can find what you need faster,” Anthony explained.
The ultimate goal is to take the app nationwide, but it will start in Memphis, with the Bluff City serving as a test market for the entire country. Within the first year, Anthony hopes to gain 15,000 local users.
The buildout of the platform, meanwhile — which is being done by local software company eBiz Solutions — isn’t cheap, and though it’s gained $50,000 in funding facilitated by Innova Memphis, the startup hopes to secure $1.8 million. An amount that Anthony maintains goes fully into the app. Just creating the first version, she said, costs $250,000, with the rest of the funds going toward the app’s complete buildout.
There’s a lot to be done, and the goals are lofty. But Anthony is confident the app can help bolster small businesses. And as her team works, she and her sisters keep their father in mind.
“This is taking everything he taught us to a whole new level,” she said. “I think it would be his absolute dream to see this flourish. He really believed in us."
