Consumer Business of the Year 2018

Start-up name: LovetheSales
Founders: Stuart McClure, Mark Solomon, and David Bishop
Started in: July 2017
Based in: London
Business description: Sales aggregation website

Did you know that only a third of what retailers manufacture is sold? The rest either goes to landfill, it’s incinerated, it’s sold to deep discounters or it ties up valuable warehouse space.

LovetheSales founding trio Stuart McClure, Mark Solomon, and David Bishop are on a mission to stop this terrible waste. The website aggregates sales from more than 850 retailers, making it easy for consumers to browse and buy products at the best available price.

Over the last year, Startups 100-listed LovetheSales has nearly quadrupled its individual consumers on the site from 2,400,000 – 1,850,000 of those through organic search. And, for its troubles, it’s picked up Consumer Business of the Year at the Startups Awards 2018.

The website uses Minerva, a specially created artificial intelligence (AI) merchandising tool that tackles the complexity of aggregating retail products by “outputting normalised attributes for all four million products running through the site”.

What on earth does that mean you ask? It means that users are only shown relevant items as they browse the site and perform searches. It also takes retail metrics into account and understands products of interest, products that are ignored, and retailers who convert well. LovetheSales will soon develop new AI products and a universal checkout.

The business has its sights set on the US market next, where a massive £254bn is spent on discounted wares annually.

LovetheSales is radically changing the way that retailers handle, discount and sell their stock –helping consumers get the best deal on clothes that would otherwise be clogging up warehouse space or clogging up the earth in landfill.

The brand faced worthy competition from ECHO (Highly Commended) – the NHS prescription reminder, delivery and tracking app – and ethical clothing brand Lucy and Yak (Commended).