On the heels of Milo’s $75 million acquisition by eBay; a similar product inventory site, called Wishpond, is throwing its hat into the ring. Like Milo, Wishpond lists the real-time inventory of brick and mortar retail stores and is building its product listings platform around large chains like Target or BestBuy as well as from mom and pop shops in small towns.
On the merchant side, Wishpond’s platform integrates with point-of-sale systems and allows retailers to upload their inventory onto the site. Wishpond will not only list the in-stock inventory on its platform, but will also help the merchant create a storefront on their Facebook page (similar to what Payvment does). The startup says that it will populate the page with new products and promotions when applicable.
Wishpond will also advertise for the retailers inventory and Facebook storefront on Google and Facebook. And Wishpond is opening up its API to users to access the site’s 4 million products from 1400 retailers in over 100,000 locations.
Another unique feature that Wishpond offers is the ability for consumers to name their own prices on products they find on Wishpond. Local retailers can then match these prices or offer promotions for these products.
Milo, which will continue to offer its product listings as a standalone site, offers much of the same functionality as Wishpond. But I think the idea of connecting to Facebook for an online storefront with in-store product inventory is compelling. Right now Wishpond is a small fish in a big sea that includes eBay and now Google as well. But if the startup can actually pull of what it says it plans to do for small retailers (and scale), it could be successful.