RSS Inventory In-Stock Broadcast
Sometimes the real world screams for a real world solution.
If someone nails this idea, they are totally golden (although it’s hard for me to believe that someone - GOOG - isn’t already working on it). You ready for the idea that will make you a millionaire?
The Problem
I was out doing some Christmas shopping for a particular product; let’s call it “The Wee.” I couldn’t find the Wee anywhere. I really thought that the Wee was the perfect gift for my brother. I was determined to get the Wee. So I spent four hours going from mall to mall, bix box retailer to big box retailer. No one had the Wee. And I was a Wee bit saddened.
This brought to mind another situation from this past summer. It was the end of August, dog-hot, and I wanted a little wading pool for my dog. I drove around for three hours, in the dead of summer, looking for a wading pool. Guess what. I didn’t come home with one. Most stores stopped stocking pools in July because Fall was right around the corner.
So you see the problem. As consumers, we can end up going from store to store to store, and fail to find what we have in mind. We waste loads of time getting out of our cars, walking into the stores, and looking around. How could we make this easier?
The Solution
Build an easy to use RSS broadcast system for particular retail shops to broadcast whether they have certain products “in-stock.” The RSS broadcast system could be broadcast over the web, and also wirelessly from any particular shop. That way, you could either go online to see which shop has the product you want before leaving your house, or, if you’re already out shopping for the sheer joy of it (not me!!!) you wouldn’t have to get out of your car. Just pull up to the store, whip out your PDA or cell phone, and check. Less wasted time.
Some New Problems
Ok. It’s not as easy as I’ve made it out to be. For one, there will need to be someway of broadcasting general categories of products, considering that a wading pool at Sears will be a completely different product than a wading pool at Target (unless they’ve ordered from the same Chinese supplier of course!). So it won’t be sufficient to use abbreviations or product numbers. The RSS inventory will have to be logically organized and easily browsable. Not an easy challenge to overcome…unless you’re GOOG, of course.
Another problem: retail shops LOVE getting you into their store and have little incentive to keep you out. This technology will keep you out of their store if they don’t have the product you’re looking for. So, the technology will have to be adopted by some consumer-first stores and become the norm. In other words, it might not be immediately clear how this technology will help a business’ bottom line.
The Key
The key to making this idea work is keeping it simple both for the business and the consumer. The business should only have to provide basic english descriptions of their products. The consumer shouldn’t have to do much more than a Google search for the product they are interested in. The good news is that there won’t be any spammy sites to compete with. The bad news is that businesses themselves could provide spam-like results if it improves the bottom line. Nonetheless, getting relevant results shouldn’t be as difficult in a controlled situation as it is on the web.
Related Articles:
- The Stock Market for College Entrepreneurs
- How to boost your online presence
- Microsoft releases SSE
- Do Online Business Owners Feel the Recession?
- Close to Perfect Metric Software For Bloggers
Related Ads:
Share your thoughts!!!