COMPANY

Name: PICKL

Legal Name: PICKL, Inc.

Location: Los Angeles, California

Founded: September 2018

Founder(s): Ossie Cohen, Bruce Weyman, Vijay Mohan

Website: www.pickl.xyz

Social Media: 84 followers on Instagram, 50 followers on Linkedln, 3 on Twitter and 89 likes on Facebook

Industry: Global SCM Software Market

Size: $10.85B in 2016 (Source: Allied Market Research Report on Global SCM Software)

Projections: $24.53B in 2025 at a CAGR of 9.7% for 2018-2025 (Source: Allied Market Research Report on Global SCM Software)

Introduction

PICKL is looking to revolutionize brand visibility on retail shelves by using consumers to provide stocking and shelving information about products at supermarkets. The company positions itself as the Uber of retail visibility for brands and is currently targeting the natural products industry. PICKL’s proprietary platform monetizes grocery shopping for consumers, incentivizing them to provide information to a brand about their stocking situation in individual supermarkets. The interaction is also used as an opportunity to help consumers discover new brands.

The Product

The company’s application is currently in a closed beta working with a small set of consumers who have been on-boarded as ‘Exclusive Beta Testers + Strategic Brand Partners’. The downloadable app gives you an alert when you are in a supermarket a brand wants to get data from. It indicates which brand to look for, taking consumers to where the product is shelved. Consumers receive digital payments ($5, according to the company’s video on Facebook) when they complete a task, usually taking a picture of a product on a specific shelf. Brands can get a verified visual update on their stocking and shelving situation.

For the closed beta, PICKL has partnered with 5 natural products companies – Split, Mommy’s Bliss, Herbs America, Wishgarden, and Tints of Nature.

Origin and Founding Team

The company is the brainchild of Ossie Cohen, according to the company’s crowdsourced loan page on the platform Kiva. Ossie is an experienced sales executive with experience of the travel and natural products industries and claims to have won 16 awards in 5 years of engaging with the natural products industry. His motivation was to find a service that could help him engage with all brands and help them grow, which is where PICKL was born.

Co-founder Bruce Weyman is the Sales Director at Split Nutrition and has 9 years of experience in natural products retail. Vijay Mohan is the co-founder and CTO of PICKL. As a Director of Engineering at Ranker, he brings 9+ years of working as an engineer and leading technology teams to PICKL. These co-founders are also joined by Jamie McKeown, a Health Coach and wellness industry business development expert.

Trends and Performance

The company has completed a $10,000 loan from Kiva in early July, and has also gathered support from a network of public and private bodies supporting innovation in Long Beach such as the Downtown Long Beach Alliance, Employment Development Department of the Government of California, the Long Beach Small Business Development Center, and the Pacific Gateway Workforce Program.