E-commerce has provided shoppers with an alternative to visiting traditional retail stores. The ability and freedom to buy products from the comfort of a couch, bed or office desk is hard to ignore for shoppers.
So far the response to the rise of e-commerce has largely been about defending one’s turf. There’s been few genuine innovations to help local retailers combat this.
One Australian tech company rejects this status quo.
Tuggl which is available in Australia and the United States is building a new form of e-commerce that could put Australia’s traditional retailers at the forefront of retail innovation.
It’s called on-demand commerce. In essence “on-demand commerce” let’s shoppers buy online but from local stores. It’s like buying a pizza but instead you receive a pair of jeans, a set of tools, or some milk for your tea -while you boil the water. However compared with a pizza store, making it work for a consumer goods store requires a much great degree of technical sophistication.
In order to reach its end goal of providing on-demand commerce, Tuggl is making it happen in three stages. Each stage is designed to be useful for shoppers and retailers in its own right.
Stage one – Shoppers browse local stores for products that are carried. Using its data tools, Tuggl can collate ‘static product records’ for tens of thousands of retail locations. Additionally retailers that list their products on the platform have product records optimised for local search queries.
Stage two – check live inventory. Shoppers can check if a product is available in-store. Once a platform such as POS or inventory system is integrated (which takes 1-2 days per platform), the retailer doesn’t do any manual work, and all data flows automatically and updates itself periodically.
Stage three – Shoppers can order and have products delivered from local stores. The process will be similar to current food delivery applications, where the shopper is kept abreast of the delivery at every stage. This will give local retailers a real chance to give their customers a better value proposition than current retail models and fight back against e-commerce-only companies.
Get in touch
If you’d like to be listed on Tuggl or just keep in touch to keep abreast of developments in this space, send a quick email to ahoy@tuggl.com
