No matter how much a company spends on advertising a product, people still find themselves asking, “Where do I buy this”? It was precisely to answer that question that Retailigence was born. While many people now go to the Internet to do their shopping, sometimes that’s just not an option. No time to wait for shipping, you’d like to see it first or just the simple fact that you know it’s got to be in a store somewhere nearby and why shouldn’t you just go get it? — these are only some of the reasons that keep people shopping at local brick-and-mortar stores.
While not an app themselves, Retailigence’s API is the go-to product locating service for apps such as Scandit, PricePad, Pic2Shop, Shoppo! and about 400 hundred others. For users looking to find something in particular — the latest crazy-awesome kids’ toy or perhaps new running shoes for you — using their app of choice they can tap into the Retailigence database of over 7million products and zero in on the store 2 miles away holding it on a shelf at that exact moment.
“We are connecting the demand with supply at a local level,” says Nitin Gupta, VP of Business Development. The database of product availability is kept directly informed by the some 85,000 U.S. locations participating, so there’s real time knowledge behind the results you’re getting. There are benefits for the retailers as well.
The ability to deliver location-relevant inventory data is providing retailers (large and small) a way to be visible at the right time and at the right 
place. It also lets them plan ahead. Stores “stock shelves according to what people are buying — can see with the data what people are buying and what they are looking for,” states Gupta. This creates an opportunity, for example, for a travel store signed up with Retailigence to see that people have been looking locally for the newest Vera Bradley tote, allowing them stock up accordingly.
They are working on building up an analytics platform for retailers, but through the apps Retailigence gets keen insights into shopper “pre-purchase” browsing. According to Gupta, “Pre-purchase intent data also shows brands how shoppers are interacting with its products prior to a buying decision. Does proximity to a local product hold much importance or is price the much stronger variable in a purchase decision? These are the types of questions that brands can now easily answer by ulitizing location-based technologies.”
Some interesting details Retailigence has been able to glean from the app use of their API:
- Peak search/shopping times are between 11am-2pm
- Sundays and Mondays are the most active shopping days
- Apparel and electronics are the most sought after retail categories
- On average, a shopper is 4.254 miles away from a store when they conduct their search
Publically launched in November of 2010, and based in Palo Alto, CA, their initial round of financing culminated in $1.5M in seed funding from several Venture Capital funds as well as a number of Angel investors. According to a company press release, fund investors include Quest Venture Partners, 500 Startups and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
Follow Retailigence on Twitter @retailigence
