Aisles

Aisles’ mission is to provide the right tools to small retail businesses to compete in the new digital age of retail. By connecting local consumers to local retailers, Aisles eliminates the need for stores to compete for ad space with auction based advertising. These stores no longer have to pay premiums to advertise to consumers near them. Aisles also makes it easy for consumers to support their local businesses, by showing them all the options available, unlike amazon or google, where the big-box retailers are shown first.

Aisles is necessary because in-person retail is falling behind online retail. The same assurance and presence provided by online retail platforms such as google or amazon are shifting the way consumers shop. Shoppers expect to be able to know if a product is in stock before they even get to the store. When that information isn’t available to them, they default to those large platforms of google and amazon, when the product they want is near them, but they have no idea. Over time, this reduces foot traffic, hurts sales, and creates thinner margins for in-store retail. The main problem is visibility. No one wants to go to 5 different stores to try and find 1 single item. It is a waste of time and energy and creates frustration within the consumer. Aisles provides the tools for consumers to know that their product will be in the store before they go to the store. For example, if someone is looking for a specific shirt, they can put their different variables, such as “medium blue collared shirt” and it will show you all the products in the nearby stores that have those characteristics. Aisles addresses this issue by making it easy for local retailers to surface their inventories. We integrate directly into the store's POS systems to provide real-time inventory updates. We currently are connected to shopify, but are adding more POS systems. By doing this, the retailers can easily surface their inventory with very low lift. We are also hoping to integrate a delivery option such as doordash or uber. This would allow us to beat the “two-day shipping” aspect of Amazon. This also follows the mission of supporting local retail by providing more benefits to shopping local.