Start-Up Cloudshelf Expands Beyond Shopify With API That Works With Most E-Comm Platforms

October 27, 2023 by Dave Haynes

The UK start-up that developed a way to smoothly bridge Shopify small business e-commerce sites to in-store retail kiosks and interactive screens has now come up with a software handshake that works, it says, with just about any e-commerce, CMS, or ERP platform.

“We believe that every retailer should be able to create a seamless shopping experience for their customers, no matter where they are shopping,” says Giles Corbett, Founder and CEO of Cloudshelf. “With our Open API, retailers of all sizes can now connect Cloudshelf to their existing systems and data, making it easy to deliver product recommendations, inventory information, and checkout options to customers in-store.”

From PR:

The Cloudshelf Open API is easy to use and can be integrated with any major Ecommerce platform, including Shopify, Salesforce, and Magento. The API supports a wide range of features, including:

“As retailers try to balance their Digital Transformation program with driving efficiencies and managing costs, this announcement from Cloudshelf is a game changer,” says Craig Francis, Digital Signage Partner Manager at Google ChromeOS. “With Omnichannel API capabilities, retailers at every level of the market have access to the professional, robust and secure Kiosk solution from Cloudshelf. In partnership with ChromeOS retailers can have peace of mind that Cloudshelf is always running reliably, securely and as efficiently as possible. Retailers can even reimagine and modernize older Kiosk devices by deploying Cloudshelf and ChromeOS Flex”

Cloudshelf publicly launched a little over a year ago, touting a platform that could give bricks and mortar SMB retailers using Shopify a mechanism to do the same sorts of endless aisle and interactive screen experiences used by much larger, more deeply resourced retailers.

The company has written code that crawls and analyzes local retail sites on Shopify’s vast e-commerce platform and produces interactive experiences that are a lot more than just the online site on a screen in the store. It is curated and stylized to look and work like an in-store interactive site produced by a digital agency – usually for a LOT of money.

Here’s a podcast I did with Corbett last year …

  1. craig Allen keefner says:
    October 28, 2023 at 12:58 pm

    I’ll believe it when I see units deployed. Its Chrome Flex so which payment devices? And then there are merchant accounts like TSys and Chase + 20 others. I’ll grade this a trial balloon so far Dave.

    Reply
    1. Giles Corbett says:
      October 30, 2023 at 12:39 pm

      Hi Craig – thanks for the challenge and happy to show you how this works – please reach out to me on LinkedIn. And then if you want, I can point you to some deployed units.

      Our basic offering hands off from the touch screen (running on Flex, or other OS) to the user’s own mobile, from where secure payment is taken in as little as 1-click. Basically we re-purpose the retailer’s existing online payment flow, but tag and track it for proper allocation. For retailers who wish, we can also integrate with other ERP / POS solutions.

      Reply

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