101–110 of 151 posts
And claims of billion dollars are typically baseless. Anyone would commit 10 years to a project if it would be worth a billion at the end.
So appreciate the authors musing on the next big thing, the problems described are the day dreams of any entrepreneur.
Anyone had experience? Some war stories?
I wouldn't judge how lucrative or feasible and idea is without examining the domain and talking to domain experts.
A simple example would be the taxonomy of a product. In terms of commerce, the adequate description for a product would be the minimal required to identify its price and perhaps track its quantity (for FMCG). Ex. Clover 2 litre low fat milk.
On the other hand, some mass retailer clothing stores might settle for categorising products into pricing ranges. Ex. Shirt 20$ and therefore you wouldn't be able to uniquely identify the stock.
Feasibility wise - creating software that's 'free' to lure the market will bring in a lot of headaches. If your idea of accountability is 'It's free, so it's your problem if you lost all your data' - it probably won't work.
Honestly, the idea behind creating an all-in-one solution sounds much more feasible. Mini ERP software is becoming the norm nowadays.
Here's the catch, the vast majority of retail businesses aren't going to be willing to risk a critical aspect of their infrastructure on something that is "free".
As a hypothetical small business owner, I want to know who I'm going to be able to call at 8 PM Saturday night when my inventory system breaks, and how long it's going to take to send someone over to fix it.
As a hypothetical small business owner, I want to know what happens when I need to upgrade my systems in 5 years, and whether your company will still be around to support me.
As a hypothetical small business owner, I want to know that if I commit to your inventory system and retrain all of my staff, that your company won't go bust in the next 18 months, forcing me to repeat the process all over again.
As a hypothetical small business owner, when you offer something to me for "free", I see red flags all over the place. The cost may no longer be up front, but there's no such thing as a free lunch.
P.S. While consumers may like things that are free, business owners by and large do not. They understand that businesses need to make money in order to survive, and that extends to the services and infrastructure they purchase.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do they hate about it? I'm trying to "walk a mile in their shoes" as another poster put it but am coming up blank.
I think that there's two things that the restaurants hate - 1) It costs them money which eats into their already thin profit margin. 2) It makes it harder to build a relationship with the customers since the customer has to opt-in to giving their e-mail address to the restaurant which they're less likely to do compared to being asked for an e-mail address if you're making a booking directly with the restaurant. Havin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do they hate about it? I'm trying to "walk a mile in their shoes" as another poster put it but am coming up blank.
I think that there's two things that the restaurants hate - 1) It costs them money which eats into their already thin profit margin. 2) It makes it harder to build a relationship with the customers since the customer has to opt-in to giving their e-mail address to the restaurant which they're less likely to do compared to being asked for an e-mail address if you're making a booking directly with the restaurant. Havin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems a lot like saying that my business should elect not to show up in Google search results just because we're not the #1 result (or that a product shouldn't be listed on Amazon if it's not the cheapest, etc.). Pro: You get a free inventory system Pro: You show up on local search results Will some (maybe most) people go to Walmart instead? Sure, but those are people already using the app, which means that if y…
There's no such thing as a free inventory system. How will it integrate with their POS? Handle refunds, human error, and "shrinkage"? Unless you're delivering an end-to-end turnkey retail solution, an inventory tracker isn't worth much on its own. It's an interesting core idea, but it needs to account for the path dependence of existing retailers and how ill-equipped they are to adopt something totally new.
Wastage you get through stock takes, which could be done with a camera (same tablet or a phone), cloud sync so no cradle needed
It could integrate with the latest cloud based accounting systems which their existing pos wouldn't be able to handle (referral $$$), and large companies who have a lot invested in their pos system could pay an employee to integrate it though the apis if they want the search traffic
The biggest problem would be integrating it with the cash tray that goes ding, which I think is desirable I think to stop costumers reaching over the counter and grabbing money while you aren't looking. I guess deploy it as a phone peripheral.
I just wonder if the idea itself has merit. I suppose neighborhoods would specialize more and there'd be less stores with identical stock.
The other opportunity would be advertising to those retailers by suppliers and taking a cut of sales for orders to suppliers, I think that could be where the real money is
This pretty much exists in at least Sweden. Check out http://www.prisjakt.nu/ ( translated to english http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js... ). You said something like this would take 10 years to build and Prisjakt actually started 10 years ago. :-) They don't index everything of course but probably covers 99% of everything tech related and have been expanding in to new product segments all the time.…
edbpriser was bought by Aller in 2005 at which point they were said to facilitate 10% of all computer hardware sales in Denmark. I remember back in 2001-2004 where a major CPH street was full of computer hardware stores; most of them went bankrupt or gone online only.