Retail store employees spend countless hours making sure that shelves are stocked with enough cereal, toilet paper and toothpaste for customers. At best, it can take workers half their shift to notice that the inventory is low. But at worst, they fail to notice out-of-stock products for days, resulting in thousands of dollars in lost sales.
When you think of customer satisfaction drivers, what drives retail success is, ‘Is the product there that I want?’ says Mark Cook, vice president of retail at Trax. “Not being on the shelf equals a loss of sales.
Trax, a startup focused on computer vision, hopes to help store owners avoid some of that pain. It’s developing cameras and artificial intelligence that keep watch on stores shelves and automatically tracks when product inventory is low.