A new partnership from CSY Retail Systems and Google-backed retail tech firm NearSt means that from today local health and organic stores’ inventories will appear in Google in real time.
The new partnership comes as organic sales hit a 15-year high, with new technology giving physical shops a well needed boost to compete with ecommerce sales.
NearSt’s software brings customers into bricks and mortar stores by showing the products stocked in local shops to people searching online nearby, making it more convenient to buy items locally than online.
Health and organic retailers can now effortless connect their inventory to Google’s search algorithm in real time which will enable local consumers to see what is in stock on the company’s My Business Page on Google or through Google’s Shopping and Maps features.
“2020 proved to be a bumper year for organic sales as locked-down shoppers flocked to the category.” NearSt chief executive Nick Brackenbury said.
“With the organic market on track to reach £2.9 billion by the end of 2021, this partnership will enable retailers in the sector to continue to ride that wave and create incremental growth through new customers.
READ MORE: British retail technology startup NearSt secures a further £2 million in funding
“While the surge in e-commerce sales has been widely acknowledged, what’s largely been overlooked is the even bigger surge in shoppers going online to hunt out products on nearby high streets.”
“We witnessed a seven-fold jump in local product searches in places like Google last year, with 2021 settling on four times the volume of pre-pandemic levels. Google also reported an 8,000 per cent increase in searches for “who has ___ in stock” last year.
“Everything works using the barcodes, stock levels, and pricing already stored in shops’ existing EPoS systems – so you literally set it and forget it.
“Pulling data automatically every few minutes NearSt creates high quality product listings, so you don’t need to spend dozens of hours manually entering product details.”
Bristol-based Better Food has started using the NearSt tech and has already seen immediate results, with the retailer receiving more than 220,000 product discoveries which translated into 257 new customers to the store.
Better Food marketing manager Matt Philpott said: “NearSt has been a great way of introducing new customers and serving the local community through the pandemic, it was so easy to implement and a no brainer” said Matt Philpott, Marketing Manager at Better Food.
