Local Co⋅op

Drive online customers to your business

Shared Local Searchable Inventory

In an age of convenience, people looking for a specific item will typically default to large online retailers to get what they need because of how easy those companies make the purchasing experience. We want to do the same for local businesses. By creating a searchable inventory between all local businesses it'll be a lot easier for people to find and purchase the specific item they are looking for locally. For example, if someone runs out of their favorite wine they can search the local inventory and find a local liquor store to buy a new bottle from.

Sell more items

Digital Storefront

In addition to the item search page, each business on the Local Co⋅op will have a separate digital storefront that will display just their products. This will allow your existing customers to see what's new in your inventory while also allowing new customers to see the other items you offer. For example, if a user is looking at clothing in the local searchable inventory and they connect with one of your items they can click into your digital storefront to see what else you offer.

Make purchasing your products a breeze

Online Purchasing for Pickup/Delivery

Once a customer finds something they want to buy at your store they can purchase it online to reserve it for pickup at your store. Similarly if you'd like to support mail orders you could enable delivery on your items and start shipping items to customers once they purchase them on Local Co⋅op. We don't yet know how processing fees would work, but because we want to function as a co⋅op, and not as a for-profit business, a majority of the proceeds from purchases would go straight to your business.

Don't worry about changing your processes

Integration with Inventory Management Software

We want to make listing your products on Local Co⋅op as easy as possible. To enable that, we'd like to directly integrate with the inventory management system you already use, removing the need for an extra piece of software in your workflow. The only extra step would be making your products ready for a digital marketplace by adding images, descriptions, and other information like item size, materials, etc. to your inventory management software. The only time you'll need to interact with Local Co⋅op is when a user places an order.

I don't have an online store yet. What would I need to do to be on this marketplace?

If you already use an inventory management system, joining the marketplace will require taking photos of each of the products you want to list as well as giving them descriptions and other important information. Most inventory management solutions allow you to do this in their software, and because we plan to integrate with your inventory management system, you don't have to update your existing processes too much.

I already have a successful online store. Why should I join this marketplace?

Being a part of Local Co⋅op should mean less time spent by you maintaining your online store and more chances to be discovered by customers of other local businesses using the shared marketplace. Also, being a business with a good online presence helps to grow the customer base of Local Co⋅op which could allow us to offer more services to your business to make the administration of your online store even easier.

How much extra work do I have to do to maintain my Local Co⋅op listings?

Our current plan is to integrate directly with the most popular inventory management software solutions to make the administration of your online store as easy as possible. As long as you keep your inventory management software up-to-date, your Local Co⋅op listings should also be up-to-date.

How will payments work?

We don't know specifics but generally payment will be processed through Local Co⋅op and then given directly to you. We assume there will be some sort of fee as a part of that transaction, to pay for things like development and maintenance of the Local Co⋅op system, but because we plan to be a cooperative any remaining profits from those fees will be distributed back to you after expenses. We are open to feedback about how to handle costs!

Who is behind this project?

Currently the effort is just led by one person, my name is Gareth (here's my linkedin) and I've been a software engineer at HubSpot on first street for 6.5 years now. I love shopping at all of my local businesses like Broadsheet coffee, Inman wine and spirits, and Christina's spices, but I always have a problem finding some more specific items and usually have to default to amazon to buy them. I want to change that for me and everyone else in our community by making this shared marketplace a reality. My hope is to work on this as a side project while still working at HubSpot full time.