Draft:AisleFinder

AisleFinder was a Silicon Valley based startup, which allowed users to find products in stores easier by showing users which aisle each product on their shopping list was located on. AisleFinder was described as Google Maps for the store. AisleFinder was also called "The GPS of the Supermarket " by Black Enterprise magazine.

History
Founded in 2008 by Curtiss Pope, a software developer and UX designer for Google, AisleFinder initially started as an in-store interactive shopping display and kiosk application designed to enable shoppers to quickly and efficiently find the items they want to buy within medium-to-large sized shopping/retail stores.

In early 2009, with the availability of mobile app stores, AisleFinder pivoted to a consumer mobile app for iOS and Android, which allowed users to find products in stores easier by showing users which aisle each product on their shopping list was located on. AisleFinder entered the market on Thanksgiving Week 2009 with a mobile service that allowed consumers to search retail stores such as for product locations inside stores using their mobile phones.

In the summer of 2011, AisleFinder was selected to be part of the inaugural cohort of the NewMe Accelerator, featured as part of the CNN Series Black in America The New Promised Land – Silicon Valley

AisleFinder would eventually sign Big Data deals with Safeway, PepsiCo, and Supervalu. Safeway was the first retailer to buy into AisleFinder's concept.

SupermarketAPI
In 2011, AisleFinder launched SupermarketAPI, an open source API for the grocery industry. SupermarketAPI contained product details on over 150,000 grocery items as well as aisle info for over 2,400 supermarkets in the U.S. SupermarketAPI, would help retailers reduce their data and information costs by $100,000 annually.

SupermarketAPI launched in more than 2,400 supermarkets and shopping centers nationwide, including Safeway, Trader Joe's, Walmart, and Whole Foods. It also provides product details and information about, as well as pictures of, more than 150,000 grocery products. Later that year, it was reported that the API included supermarket aisle info from Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Safeway, Costco and Wal-Mart in the U.S. . SupermarketAPI provided the data for products for Wal-Mart's Mobile app, as a part of Walmart Labs.

In 2012, it was reported that AisleFinder's base of users for its mobile app had grown from 40 users to 64,000.