Nembol: Get products from shelf to Internet in 90 seconds

Traditional independent retailers often find the Internet tricky to get to grips with and understandably, most online sellers we talk to don’t have enough hours in the day without having a stream of walk-in customers to attend to and retail displays to keep stocked.

Not only are there a ton of marketplaces to get to grips with in addition to trying to run a website, but there’s also a vast array of social media to consider – everything from Twitter to Facebook and Tumblr to Pinterest. And all that to deal with in between the obvious interruptions of customers visiting your shop.

Now an Italian company, Nembol, is trying to simplify things for small retailers with a simple to use app that streamlines getting their products online.

Currently available is the Nembol Apple iOS app, although Android is coming soon and the premise is that everything bar the basics is cut out in order to get basic product listings ready to go and broadcast onto multiple channels. Nembol aim to enable retailers to get an item online in just 90 seconds and broadcast to multiple channels in one tap.

To achieve this the retailer simply snaps a photo of the product they want to sell including labels and packaging for text recognition, use the captured text or type to add details and descriptions. Barcode scanning can also be used to auto-populate date for recognised products. Then you’re ready to publish a unique interlinked post across your social network and marketplaces profiles in one tap.

There are some limitations, for instance on eBay you’ll want to have set up your Shop and listed at least one item to set your shipping defaults, return policies etc so that they can be reused by the app listings. On Amazon you can only list against existing ASINs, it’s not possible to create an ASIN using the app. The aim is simplicity and enable a busy retailer to quickly and easily get listings live in between serving customers so ease of use takes priority over complexity.

This really isn’t an app for a dedicated marketplace seller. This is the app for your mate who’s run off their feet, wishes they could get selling online but simply don’t have hours at a time to sit down and get their listings done. If you help them do one listing on eBay to get an account set up, then if they have an Apple device they should be able to at least get products listed one or two at a time whenever they’ve got an empty shop and if they are disturbed can pick up again when they’ve served their customers.