Your idea, reviewed
A simple app that moves stock tracking for neighbourhood shopkeepers off paper and onto a phone. The problem is real and daily; the hard part is not the software but getting an audience that keeps its distance from technology to use an app for the first time. You are selling a habit, not a product.
Score card
Is the problem real
5/5
A grocer or a nut shop tracks stock in a notebook today and only notices waste and missed orders at the end of the month — the pain is concrete and it repeats.
Market size
4/5
Türkiye has hundreds of thousands of small retailers (an order-of-magnitude estimate, not a measured figure); but they are not all reachable, and the first ring spreads street by street.
Business model
3/5
A monthly subscription makes sense, but price sensitivity is extreme: anything above a few hundred lira a month is not even a conversation with this audience.
Competition
3/5
Bookkeeping packages already do this; the difference has to be “no setup, one screen”, not “cheaper”.
Feasibility
4/5
The product is technically small: barcode scanning, a product list, an alert. A first version ships in a couple of months.
Strengths
- The person with the problem and the person paying are the same — one decision-maker, no enterprise sales cycle.
- The value shows on day one: a shopkeeper who uses it for a week can see what has run out, and that is a reason to keep going.
- Word of mouth is strong: shopkeepers on the same street know each other and trust a recommendation.
Risks
- The data-entry barrier: before the app is useful, hundreds of products have to be entered, and that is the dullest possible first day. Most abandonment happens right there.
- The price ceiling is low; revenue per customer is small, so the cost of selling overtakes it quickly.
- Churn can be high: a notebook never breaks, while an app stops when the phone is replaced or the connection drops.
Your first customers
- Three shopkeepers in your own neighbourhood — people you can set up face to face and get feedback from on the spot.
- Nut shops and delicatessens that already run a card terminal, so they are not entirely closed to technology.
- Access through wholesalers: one wholesaler’s dealer list beats knocking on doors one at a time.
Competitors
Not listed. We ask the model not to name a company it is unsure exists; an empty list beats an invented name. Research the competitors yourself.
First 30 days
- Spend a day beside five shopkeepers and write down how they track stock today — start from observation, not assumption.
- Before writing any product, test a single question: “If I filled this list in for you, what would you pay a month?”
- Cut the first version to one screen: add a product, mark it low, list what has run out. No reports, no charts, no multiple branches.
- Do the data entry yourself: enter the product list for the first ten customers by hand. It does not scale, but it removes the first barrier and shows you real data.
- After four weeks look at one number: how many shopkeepers opened the app again in week two?
Ask yourself
- Who fills in the product list on day one — with no answer to this, the product has no answer either.
- Why is the shopkeeper’s current solution (the notebook) not enough — did you hear that from them, or are you assuming it?
- At what monthly price does the shopkeeper still say “cheap” while you stay in business?