Store Associate Tooling Call
Open call · Hosted by Northwind Retail. Four of the jobs an associate does most still mean queueing for the one back-office terminal in the shop.
About this open call
What this event is about
Returns, exchanges, collection handovers and stock corrections still send an associate off the floor to the one back-office terminal. We want those four jobs on the handset the floor already carries, learnable by a temporary hire inside one shift.
What we are looking for
Startups with a live associate-facing app that runs on the standard Android handsets shops already carry and needs no printed manual to learn.
Problem statements
One terminal per shop
A return, an exchange, a collection handover and a stock correction all run on the single back-office PC. At four o'clock on a Saturday the queue for it is three associates long, and every one of them is away from customers.
Learnable in one shift
Temporary staff get a short induction and then work the busiest weeks of the year. Anything that has to be explained twice gets abandoned for the terminal, and the terminal is what they were taught.
Dead spots in the stockroom
Signal drops in stockrooms and lift lobbies across most of the estate. A tool that loses a half-finished return when the bars disappear is worse than the walk, so say what yours does offline and what happens when it reconnects.
Evaluation criteria
100% weighted total
Timeline
- Jun 22, 2026
Brief published
The four tasks were scoped with store managers before the brief went out.
- Jun 29, 2026
Entries open
Entries are read as they arrive rather than in one batch at the end.
- Sep 22, 2026
Shortlist and shop visits
A few teams spend a Saturday shift on the floor with the associates who would use the tool.
- Oct 6, 2026
Pilot decision
One team takes the pilot into fourteen shops, in time for the autumn hiring intake.
Sponsors & partners
Northwind Retail
Host
Plug and Play
Programme partner
FAQs
Which handsets would we build against?
The Android handsets already on the floor. Entrants who join get the model, OS version and screen size in writing, and nothing new is bought for a pilot.
Do we need access to the till system?
For these four tasks, yes: returns and stock corrections write to the existing till and stock systems through their APIs. Name the calls you need and what an associate sees when one of them times out.
What does it cost to enter?
Nothing. Joining is free, and sending the entry is what puts your product in front of the store operations team.
Take part
Submit your entry before the deadline. Every entry is scored against the criteria above.