Interview Questions for Mark Cummins, Head of Pointy Corporation
Pointy: Revolutionizing Local Retail in the Digital Age
Pointy, a Dublin-based tech company founded by Mark Cummins, is on a mission to help local retailers thrive in the digital era. The platform is designed to make it easier for small to medium-sized retail stores to get online and reach their consumers effectively.
In today's consumer-driven market, personalized experiences are increasingly expected, aided by technology. Consumers are seeking an omnichannel experience, and retailers need to be flexible and modernized to meet them where they are. Pointy's user experience is designed to benefit both retailers and consumers, providing detailed product and store information to consumers searching locally.
Pointy builds an online catalog of in-store products that can be found in search engines, making it simpler for retailers to showcase their offerings. The platform syncs with cloud POS systems like Lightspeed, Square, Vend, and Clover, or the Pointy box which plugs into traditional point-of-sale systems. This automates the process of digitizing products, saving retailers time and effort.
The platform is equipped with a machine learning model that aims to ensure accurate inventory records despite real-world data messiness and mistakes. It considers various data points to determine inventory levels, including product scanning frequency and manual de-listing options.
Pointy's Local Inventory Ads feature allows retailers to easily set up ads targeting specific locations, ensuring their products are visible to local consumers. This is particularly useful during events like the California wildfires, where face masks were the top trending search on Pointy.
Pointy's platform is designed to make retailer pages SEO-friendly, aiming to rank for searches like "[product] near me" or "[product][location]". This helps retailers attract more local consumers and compete with larger online retailers.
The company's customer base is diverse, ranging from small retailers to those with significant marketing spend and e-commerce arms. Pointy takes data entry out of the equation for retailers, ensuring their online presence is always up-to-date and accurate.
As retail evolves towards a consumer-centric model that merges online and offline channels (New Retail), Pointy is at the forefront, helping retailers bridge the gap between the two worlds. Retailers should take note of emerging and existing technology like Pointy to help them reach their consumers effectively.
