I talked about something like this years ago to my sister, who actually owns a retail store. As most people indicated, stores do not want to let anyone else know what their inventories are, especially customers.
But also, depending on the type of store you are, inventories are not as tight as you would think. Stores have a general idea of how much inventory they have on hand, but they never have an exact amount. And the thing is, most don't care. That was the part that surprised me the most. They expect a certain amount of theft, misplaced inventory, wrong inventory counts sent from their suppliers, etc, so they don't waste a lot of time making sure their inventory is extremely accurate.
This is very likely true today. But things will evolve. There are many variables to consider:
- Competition between shops
- product brand and quality
- proximity to clients (consider raise of petrol price)
- associate shop brand with product (locate closest starbuck, not only coffee shop)
This is certainly not an original idea and I'm not sure how it could be possible to become a leader in it. Users need a map to locate the shops. So the map is a key component here.
This THE reason why wal-mart, and in extention amazon, became that profitable and big. wal-mart tracked AND managed inventories to almost perfection. and amazon hired wal-mart supply chain experts pretty early on. you can the effects now. amazon is much more than just its website.
It can, not easily but most of the management needed by said corner store can be automated using SaaS. This approach combined with the app AND the point-of-sales data you can provide to smaller stores by doing so offer benefits for everyone. And the overhead won't be that big for the SaaS start-up as soon as economies of scale kick in IMO.
But also, depending on the type of store you are, inventories are not as tight as you would think. Stores have a general idea of how much inventory they have on hand, but they never have an exact amount. And the thing is, most don't care. That was the part that surprised me the most. They expect a certain amount of theft, misplaced inventory, wrong inventory counts sent from their suppliers, etc, so they don't waste a lot of time making sure their inventory is extremely accurate.