Product Availability Company Makes News!

I had a chance to talk with Karl Swensen, the CEO and Cofounder of Pull Logic, a new technology startup that has received a lot of buzz from being chosen as part of the Innovation Lab at NRF this past January, and being named by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor in Supply Chain.” Here’s some of our conversation.

Karl, tell me about Pull Logic.

Thanks Cathy. Our company is based on research out of Georgia Tech and Dr. Benoit Montreuil who leads the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute there. We are purely focused on driving revenue at retailers, brands, and manufacturers by increasing the conversion rate with in-store customers by adding new in-store capabilities and improving “Product Availability” with how inventory is deployed at various locations:?stores, DCs, etc.?

An IHL study in 2018 found that some of the top reasons that shoppers leave a store without buying is that: 1) they couldn’t find knowledgeable salespeople, 2) didn’t have the right information, or 3) the right products weren’t available in their time frame.?In 2022, they now estimate that these lost sales might be as high as $2 trillion. Pull Logic uses a narrowly defined AI to address these issues to help customers find what they are seeking.

How does it work inside the store?

Pull Logic has a “virtual salesperson” that customers or salespeople can access via QR codes or interactive avatar driven kiosks in the store. We enable customers to express their preferences and then be able to search all inventory as well as “smart substitutes” within the customer’s time frame that will quickly help close the sale right then.??

It’s not an eCommerce or mobile app but meant to mimic what a great salesperson does to ask questions and find suitable products for customers.?Essentially, we can add more trained “virtual salespeople” to the floor as well as make existing salespeople more productive.?We focus on certain high value product categories that have some complexity in functions / features and would really benefit having a salesperson (and not everything for sale in a store).??For example, in a DIY context, some examples of product categories could be appliances, power tools, ceiling fans, lighting, grills, plus many more.

Tell me about the how you view inventory.

We focus on “Product Availability” and use a new forward-looking metric for assessing inventory readiness on what we learn from capturing customer demand and preferences in our virtual salesperson application I described earlier. We call this the “Product Availability Ratio,” or PAR.?There are a lot of complex factors that go into PAR, but its implementation is very simple – it’s a percentage – and it predicts the probability you will satisfy the next customer that walks in.

For example, if category at a given location and product category has 85% PAR that means it has an 85% probability of satisfying the next customer.?We use this metric to increase PAR at all inventory locations: store, DC, all supply chain nodes by recommending what items with high PAR should be replenished.

Also based on the information we learn about the customer from our virtual salesperson, we can optimize product placement for what should be in-store and what online.

What kinds of results have you had?

Well, our first implementation of these concepts increased revenue by 30% with no additional inventory or salespeople, so we are very confident in our ability to have a big and meaningful impact.?We’ve also seen dramatic reductions in unproductive inventory increasing inventory turns.

?So, what does it take to implement?

We’ve purposely made it simple to implement in as little as 6 weeks, and we work with existing systems. We don’t rip out any systems a company currently has, and there is no complex system implementation effort.

Who should they reach out to learn more?

You can reach out to me at?[email protected]?or send me a request through LinkedIn!