Locally Turns 10

Intro

As we at Locally celebrate our 10th anniversary, we would like to reflect on a decade filled with innovation, growth, and unwavering commitment to connecting brands, retailers, and consumers. While the ten-year mark itself is a remarkable achievement, there is more to the story of Locally than our ten-year longevity. Today, Locally serves over 55 million unique online shoppers each month, facilitates annual online-to-offline sales referrals worth over $1.8 billion, and represents more than 47,000 retailers worldwide. These incredible milestones only underscore the significance of our ten-year journey. I must extend my deepest gratitude to our customers, partners, and dedicated team members who have been instrumental in our success. The purpose of this blog is to take a look back at how Locally started - from its humble beginnings in New Orleans - to becoming a leading shopping enablement platform and a highly connected ecosystem that continually drives value for all our stakeholders.

The Backstory

In the late 2000s, shoppers were increasingly researching products online, with e-commerce gaining momentum and the appeal of no sales tax and highly subsidized delivery. However there was a significant challenge for retailers and brands: shoppers were starting their research online, but there was no way to connect the shopper with real-time product availability at their local stores.

By August of 2014, we were demoing our first tools at Outdoor Retailer.

The challenge of bridging online and offline shopping experiences can be likened to the dilemma moviegoers face. Imagine if you wanted to see a specific movie, but the most information you could find is a list of local theater addresses. Without information about what’s playing and showtimes, the value of showing up to the theater diminishes significantly. Similarly, shoppers need to know if the products they are interested in are available at nearby stores before getting in their cars. Locally addresses this issue by collecting real-time inventory data and integrating it into online shopping experiences, ensuring that consumers can confidently visit local retailers knowing that the products they want are in stock. This approach vastly boosts the likelihood of a successful local transaction, but it also improves the shopper’s experience while driving foot traffic and sales for local businesses, much like how a well-informed movie schedule boosts theater attendance.

SIDE NOTE: Webrooming, Click-and-Collect, and Research Online, Purchase Offline (ROPO) were commonly used terms, but poorly implemented by retailers in the US at the time.

During our early years, a group of influential brands and retailers such as Patagonia, Arc’teryx, Osprey, Black Diamond, Merrell, Mountain Hardwear, Smartwool, Sea to Summit, and others came together with a common objective. They were driven by a shared vision to unite and innovate, exploring various ideas to create a unified shopping experience where shoppers could find and reserve the products they were researching online for pickup at their local stores. This shift from an all-offline to an integrated online+offline approach presented an exciting opportunity for both brands and retailers to innovate and adapt their traditional business methods to meet the evolving needs of their consumers.

I, plus a small team of believers quit our jobs, secured a humble amount of capital from industry angel investors, built the first version of our solutions, and Locally was born.

Initially, to show shoppers where they could buy a product nearby, Locally had to build a reliable inventory ingestion system, which was no small task at the time. Solving this challenge meant addressing complex data accuracy and store-to-store connectivity problems. However, our small team persevered and successfully onboarded many of the most influential retailers to the platform. Today, these pioneering retailers and brands have grown with Locally and continue to use Locally’s solutions to enhance their shopping experience and drive sales.

This highlights the enduring relationship and continued success of these retailers and brands that helped solve problems with Locally.

Osprey Packs, used our Product Locator in the early days.

A Decade of Customer-driven Product Advancements and Growth

The first product Locally released was a groundbreaking store locator, but it was far more than just a list of authorized dealers in a shopper’s area. This innovative tool allowed shoppers to search for specific products available in local stores, creating a seamless bridge between online research and in-store shopping. At a time when few brands had even started their e-commerce journey, this solution enabled brands to offer a comprehensive e-commerce experience through their authorized dealer networks, while giving retailers an effortless way to establish a shoppable online presence. Pioneering brands like Osprey were the first to implement this transformative technology.

Building on this success, Locally introduced an advanced product locator as shopper traffic increasingly went directly to product detail pages (PDPs). This wasn’t just any product locator; it was a sophisticated tool that could pinpoint the exact color and size variants available at both brand-owned stores and authorized dealers. With robust back-end controls, brands could customize search results, set search distances, and determine which products to display locally. This flexibility ensured a tailored and efficient shopping experience. The product locator also evolved to include features like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), and reserve online, pick up in-store (ROPIS), offering shoppers a true omnichannel experience. This innovative solution was first adopted by forward-thinking brands who recognized its potential to revolutionize retail, the first of which was Sea to Summit.

Dozens of other innovative solutions have been developed over the last ten years and there are many more to come. On tap for the coming years are: a marketing solution that finally brings parity between online and offline shopping, an analytics solution that enables partners to achieve better sell-in and sell-through results, and a headless version of our platform that empowers our clients to build their own online-to-offline shopping experiences.

By integrating with POS and other e-commerce system providers, and pioneering future search and shopping applications, Locally continues to lead the way in online-to-offline retail innovation.

Investors Supercharge Locally’s Mission

Our clients’ shops were empty and they needed our help.

By 2023, unique shopper usage of Locally’s tools surpassed 55 Million per month. Trailing online-to-offline sales referrals surpassed 1.8 billion. But to take it to the next level required a more focused investment. In our journey to drive significant growth and scale our operations, Locally has taken investment dollars from Valency Capital and Corbel Capital. These partnerships will be crucial in providing the financial resources and strategic expertise needed to expand our platform’s capabilities, enter new markets, and enhance our technological infrastructure. With the backing of Valency Capital and Corbel Capital, we can accelerate our mission of seamlessly connecting brands, retailers, and consumers, ensuring that we remain at the forefront of the retail technology industry. Their support has been instrumental in enabling us to innovate rapidly, meet increasing consumer demands, and solidify our position as a market leader.

our original logo

Locally gives online shoppers a new perspective.

Conclusion

Reflecting on the past decade, we are immensely proud of our journey. Locally has grown from a visionary idea to a leading platform that connects brands, retailers, and consumers. At Locally, we will continue to lead the future of shopping by seamlessly integrating local and online experiences. We empower local businesses to thrive in the digital age, bringing their unique inventories to the fingertips of millions of modern shoppers. Through relentless innovation and strategic collaboration, you can expect us to own the space where online convenience meets local discovery. Our commitment ensures that every purchase offers the best of both worlds, creating a seamless, connected, and enriching brand experience for all. We thank everyone who has been a part of this incredible journey and look forward to many more years of partnership success, employee success, innovation, and community impact.

There’s more of us, but we’re still on the road talking about local shopping.