Haystack Launches For NYC, Offering Website and iOS App To Find Products In Local Stores

NEW YORK, May 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Haystack Search is a new company that aims to be the engine behind the $4 trillion physical retail industry, bringing the seamless search, browsing, and delivery experience of e-commerce to physical shopping in order to help brick-and-mortar retailers compete in the age of Amazon.

Haystack is solving problems faced by both the buyer and seller in retail transactions. Through Haystack's website and app, shoppers can search across every nearby store's shelves for the items they are looking to buy now, an experience similar to Yelp but for specific product inventory. For physical retailers who struggle to connect to shoppers and advertise their inventory, Haystack offers a high-quality channel through which they can be discovered.

"Needing something last minute and not knowing where to find it is an extremely common problem", says Rohit Gupta, co-founder of Haystack. In general, shopping locally can be frustrating because of poor data on product detail and in-stock availability.  "One bad outcome from this situation is that many purchases simply do not occur", concludes Mr. Gupta. Haystack's local retail marketplace is solving this problem.

In the short term, Haystack aims to be the go-to service for use cases best fulfilled through in-person shopping, e.g.:

• Shopping for perishable and hard-to-ship items
• Needing something urgently
• Looking for an item in an unfamiliar neighborhood
• Wanting to touch and try before buying

In the longer term, Haystack will leverage its data to power the same capabilities for physical retail that are typically associated with e-commerce, such as high-quality online browsing and delivery, and will ultimately power an omnichannel experience for local retailers.

Haystack's capabilities are built on proprietary inventory technology which combines barcode-level product data when available with coarser data from retailers without sophisticated systems, allowing all stores to appear on Haystack.

About Haystack
Haystack Search LLC was founded in late 2015 by two Wharton MBA classmates: Ben Dean, the founding Chief Analyst of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Office of Data Analytics, and Rohit Gupta, a full-stack developer and the former Head of Global Oil Product Analytics at Citadel. For more information, visit searchhaystack.com and download the iOS app, which are currently focused on New York City.

SOURCE Haystack Search

Related Links

http://searchhaystack.com