Retail technology startup stories interview: Danny Howe and Lee Hart, Co-founders of Stored

RTIH gets the lowdown on Stored, which is the brainchild of Co-founders Danny Howe, former Managing Director at payments firm WorldFirst and Lee Hart, former UK General Manager at FinTech big hitter Fiserv.

RTIH: Tell us about yourselves and Stored

DH and LH: We both have a background in payments, holding MD and GM roles at WorldFirst and Fiserv respectively.

In those roles we spent a lot of time with retailers and the insights we gained from that gave us a good understanding of the challenges they were facing and the limitations of the tools available to address them.

We decided that to really help them, we needed to spend time directly understanding the journeys of their customers and then build a solution from the ground up. Stored is that solution.

Consumers using Stored can curate shopping baskets and wish lists containing online and offline items from any retailer in one place and share them via social media and messaging.

Our app offers retailers a way of pooling their collective scale to reach consumers who are considering their products and to offer incentives and discounts to nudge them towards purchase.

RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?

DH and LH: Ultimately it was our frustration at our inability to meet those retailer needs in our previous roles. We witnessed first hand the difficulties and pain points retailers experienced because of the disconnected nature of multi-channel retail.

That frustration led us to complete a detailed consumer study within which we found that 98% of the 1,200 respondents were saving product ideas in one or more ways across multiple channels. While 56% started a product search via one channel but completed the purchase via another.

Consumers need a more connected shopping experience. However, to meet consumers’ expectations, there are big barriers to entry for most retailers.

It’s incredibly expensive to develop your own app and even more so to drive adoption and maintain it. We can deliver this experience on behalf of the retailers and provide this to them for little cost but huge benefit.

RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?

DH and LH: We’ve been staggered by the positive reaction from the industry so far. To date we’ve secured partnerships with more than 800 retailers.

We’ve attracted some of the brightest brains in retail to join us on our journey and have developed a very strong advisory board including retail influencer Miya Knights and founder of All Saints Stuart Trevor.

The reaction from retailers has been overwhelmingly positive, as they can immediately understand the problem Stored can solve and how it can improve their conversion.

RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?

DH and LH: Removing personal bias from our roadmap and product development.

We all have a view on how we want things to look or work, but when building a product like Stored, the most critical thing is that it works in the way that our customers want it to.

That means spending huge amounts of time and effort collecting, analysing and prioritising feedback and data. It’s a journey that will never end, but it’s the only way to build a truly customer centric product.

RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the omnichannel retail sector right now?

DH and LH: To meet today’s consumers’ expectations of a connected phygital experience, there are big barriers to entry for most retailers.

It’s incredibly expensive to develop your own app and even more so to drive adoption and maintain it. Fortunately, Stored is available for retailers to partner with to enable a phygital experience at a low cost.

With the alarming cost-of-living crisis, consumers are more hesitant in their purchasing and the “save for later” economy is more significant than ever before.

Retailer channels are optimised for conversion, but they are often not able to harness the potential of customers who are interested, but the time to buy isnt now.  

RTIH: What's the best question about your company or the market asked of you recently by a.) an investor and b.) a customer?

DH and LH: From an investor:

“Why would someone use Stored instead of what they do today?”

We like this because it’s a question we have to ask ourselves constantly. In the end, if we aren’t adding enough value then they won’t.

Ultimately it’s not for us to answer based on hypotheses, it’s for us to answer based on data and we have reams of that which backs the existence of our problem statement; that there is no consolidated way to save, share and purchase items across retailers…

and post launch we’re quickly seeing that translate to user adoption and great feedback.

But having a good answer doesn’t stop it from being a great question.

From a customer:

“Can I use Stored for…?”

One of the most exciting things about releasing Stored into the wild has been seeing the unexpected ways which people are using it. We’ve had creators sharing the products which they promote.

Travel agents using it to share holiday options with clients. Interior designers (professional and amateur) using it to create easily purchasable mood boards; which was something we thought we’d leave to Pinterest, but we made the images larger as it was better for accessibility and now we have it being used for design work.

We’ve even had commercial buyers using it to send purchase lists to suppliers and sales agents using it to send recommendations to clients. So the question we love is “can I use it for….” Because invariably, we haven’t thought of it ourselves!

RTIH: What can we expect to see from Stored during 2023?

DH and LH: We expect the biggest development for Stored this year to be optimising it as a tool for creators.

This is critical as they are key to helping retailers accelerate sales through audience expansion.

Stored removing the friction within that sales funnel will provide a further accelerant to what is increasingly becoming one of their key distribution channels and ultimately see us realise our objective of providing seamless connected journeys faster.