It’s Saturday afternoon and you’re on your way to your big soccer match. While driving, you have a moment of panic: you’ve left your game-day soccer cleats in the closet at home. You can’t turn back now without missing the match. Time to think quick: where can you buy some Men’s size 10 Nike Tiempo soccer cleats with time to make the game?
This is just one of the problems Booodl CEO, George Freney (above), wants to solve.
We’ve had such a great time working with George as a Zoom2u customer, we wanted to take a moment to learn more about him and what he’s been building with Booodl…
George, thanks so much for chatting with us! We’re excited to hear more about Booodl. Can you share more about the product with us?
Booodl saves shoppers time by helping them find the right physical retail store selling the product they want. It’s sort of like Google, but only for the physical world (not online retail). It’s a very tough problem to solve as you need to get a lot of data about the products retail stores sell. We’re tackling it in 3 phases. Phase 1 – help shoppers find stores based on the brand and category of product they are looking for. Phase 2 – help shoppers find stores based on the product name and Phase 3 – help shoppers find stores based on size, colour & inventory. That’s the grand vision we’re working towards. People often forget that before retailers organised the data on websites to be indexed by search engines, you couldn’t find the right online retailer selling what you wanted! It’s seamless today, and we will do the same for physical retail.
So, if someone was looking for new Adidas Stan Smith sneakers close by, you could help them out?
That’s the plan! As long as retailers are sharing the data with us, we can tell shoppers that a store nearby is likely to sell that product.
That is awesome. So, what’s been your secret sauce to building the business so quickly? Any tips or tricks you can share?
Sweet Chilli. We’re definitely moving quickly now because we’ve validated the problem we are solving for shoppers and retailers – that’s the hard part. There were a couple of years spent experimenting and pivoting to get us where we are today, but it’s all part of the journey and is the reason we are where we are today. With regard to moving quickly, my tips are: validate the problem exists, iterate to get a solution that solves it and then focus, focus, focus. Distraction is so easy; focus is incredibly hard. You can never be too focused on the next step required to grow.
All great advice. Where do you see things going for Booodl, and the retail industry as a whole, in the next few years?
Booodl will become a key component of the shopper journey, ensuring the right store or brand stockist gets discovered by the right shopper. Through Booodl, shoppers all over the world will be able to seamlessly find physical stores selling what they want. Retailers need to make stores more discoverable to make sure shoppers can find them and experience what only in-store can offer. It is critical to them succeeding in a retail world increasingly dominated by Amazon.
Very true. Along those lines, what services do you find the most useful to help keeping business running smoothly and competitively?
Where to begin! There are so many. These are the ones I use the most: Slack, Asana, Gmail, Xero, PipeDrive, Expert360 and of course Zoom2u.
Aw shucks, we’re happy to keep things moving! How do you see deliveries impacting the retail industry moving forward?
Deliveries will have a huge impact on retail. If you can find a store selling what you want, why not get it delivered straight away? Amazing store discovery, combined with a delivery service like Zoom2u, can turn every store into a digitally integrated shopping experience. Perhaps Booodl and Zoom2u can integrate to make this happen in the future.
Couldn’t agree more, and we’d love to see how we can integrate. Now, lastly, If you could impart us with one nugget of Freney-wisdom, what would it be?
One nugget of wisdom is a tough ask – I would say “if you believe something with the same conviction as the sun coming up, it is reality and will happen”. Humans are only limited by the limitations they put on themselves and that is our choice.
Conviction is key, and those are some great words to live by. Well said George, and thanks for sharing with us!
Check in with us again next time for more advice, tips, tricks, and general information about our customers and their business! If you’d like to share your thoughts or stories with us, give us a shout at hello@zoom2u.com
