A platform described as ‘Tinder for retail buyers’ has scored £300,000 investment.
Glasgow firm Product Guru, which helps retailers discover suppliers with new products, counts John Lewis, Tesco and TK Maxx among its early clients after launching in late 2018.
The funding round included Asia-based Belmond Capital, Scotmid and Scottish Enterprise.
“After running my own companies for nearly 20 years, I have first-hand experience of how difficult it can be for emerging brands to get their products in front of retail buyers,” said founder Simon Coyle.
“From the retailers’ point-of-view, they may have lots of customer-facing modern technologies in their stores – such as automated checkouts or digital ads – but Product Guru is the first technology platform to shake-up their back-office product discovery operations and make it easier for them to discover the latest trends and find exciting new products for their customers.
“This £300,000 investment will allow us to further develop our platform for both buyers and suppliers with analytics and intelligent recommendations, while marketing our services to a much wider audience.
“Buyers are pushed for time, so Product Guru makes it quicker, easier and – ultimately – cheaper for them to connect with potential suppliers.”
Product Guru is free to use, with the option of a paid subscription to access sales analytics, product engagement data and product trends.
Patricia Poon, managing partner and founder of Belmond Capital, said: “Product Guru is solving problems on both sides of the fence – it allows both local and international emerging brands to get their products in front of buyers and it allows retailers to stay on trend and choose from a wide selection of options cost effectively at the click of a button.
“Product Guru’s intelligent platform digitises retailers’ product discovery workflows, and greatly improves the productivity of retail buyers.
“Belmond Capital invests in companies that are disrupting their markets, across retail, financial services, communications and industrial sectors.
“Product Guru fits perfectly into our portfolio and I’m looking forward to working with Simon to add more intelligent functionalities, and to scale the platform both in the UK and internationally.”