Browser tool Sook seeks to help Seattle businesses better compete online
Oct 31, 2020, 8:23 AM | Updated: Nov 1, 2020, 9:37 pm
Seattle area businesses have been hit hard by coronavirus. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
Amazon just reported a massive increase in sales up 37% in the last quarter. Local small businesses, on the other hand, are struggling. So is that Amazon’s fault or is it ours? When you are in the market to buy something, do you even think to try and buy local online? One local entrepreneur wants to change that.
Jonathan Sandals moved to Seattle from Montreal just a year ago and his browser extension called Sook is already making a difference for some local small businesses. He joined Gee and Ursula to discuss how it works.
“Seattle is full of these amazing small businesses that are kind of crucial to the character of the city. But let’s say I wanted to buy a jacket from one of them. I would probably need to go to 20 individual websites because each store sets up its own kind of shopify e-commerce store, and basically that makes shopping local online impossible,” he said.
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“So the idea was why don’t we just create a marketplace where you could open it up at any time, click a particular product item like jackets and then see all the offerings that are within three miles or 10 miles of 25 miles from your house, and that’s what we did.”
Sandals says that the way the tech scene is set up right now, it’s hard for local businesses to compete. But believes establishing better online infrastructure to shop local can help offset that.
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“Well, right now, just the way tech is set up there’s just no way to connect consumers with small businesses in their community. All these people have online stores, but there’s just no way to shop them easily right now. And I think if we just connect the dots, the tech does exist for us to make buying an amazing product, you know, five miles down the road easier than it is to buy a mediocre product that’s maybe 5000 miles away,” he said.
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