

Show HN: I wrote a crowd-source supported "aisle finder" - cartcombine

http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cartcombine.com<p>I dislike floundering in grocery stores wandering around looking for things.  My goals were to get in and out of stores as quickly as possible.  I&#x27;ve looked into products like aisle finder but it&#x27;s behind a paywall and the reviews were bad for the product.<p>For right now you can make searches, create products, create stores, tie them to individual stores and give them attributes.  I wanted to concentrate on making it easy to use with a clean interface.  This isn&#x27;t limited to grocery stores either.  If there&#x27;s an aisle with a price, it can go into this site.<p>I am the only developer, it took me six months to write from start to MVP and I&#x27;m really excited to show it off.<p>I&#x27;m hoping I can make this grow into a self-governing grocery delivery service too, but that&#x27;s phase 2.  I don&#x27;t want to have to wait for instacart to come to my city, and really it should be publicly supported anyway.<p>This is completely free except when creating shopping lists, which is more of a convenience, and swapping from store to store will update the aisles that the products are in.  That feature is $5&#x2F;month, but really, I feel the amount of time you&#x27;re saving using something like this will be worth it.  Also by charging money I can make phase 2 become a reality.<p>You can also use it to find where a product might be before driving around looking for it.  Don&#x27;t set a current store and do a search for it to discover it&#x27;s location and price.<p>The data is sparse, but that&#x27;s because only I am updating it right now.  Jump on board!<p>Any questions please ask!  It&#x27;s been a long way coming but I feel pretty accomplished, and personally I enjoy using the site myself as well.
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anigbrowl
I think you're going to have problems getting this off the ground for general
consumers because the data is sparse. However, I think (based on your Krimpets
example) that you could usefully target immigrant communities (international
and interstate) for specific things. For example, I'm from Ireland, and of
course there are particular kinds of foods that are very popular in Ireland
and the UK that are hard to find in the US - rather than worrying which aisle
they're in, my first hurdle is to just find a store that stocks them at all!
Perhaps targeting particular groups like this could help you get the early
adopters you need to achieve network effects.

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cartcombine
nice. good point, thanks for the feedback. i'm making it a personal endeavor
to add 5 or so items every time i go shopping to help build a list. i def
don't think this is a short term victory, but probably a year or so of working
at it.

