Rustgate’s tech aims to eliminate retail “sweat moment”

Gregg Setzer

Gregg and Monica Stezer founded technology company Rustgate to solve a problem they themselves saw in their previous roles as owners of Porches & Yards outdoor retail store.

Michael Setzer, Gregg’s father, founded Porches & Yards, and when he passed, Gregg and Monica took over. During their time running the store, they started reading about how retail businesses need e-commerce sites and found out how complicated that process can be. 

Monica Setzer

Gregg also says one of their biggest pain points while in retail was the time it took to go into their catalogs and calculate the pricing. 

“You can either do it ahead of time or do it on the fly,” he says. “It took us a long time to do it ahead of time. We’ve been shopping at larger stores and they calculate it on the fly, and that’s where we see an opportunity for automation.”

That’s where Rustgate comes in. Focusing less on e-commerce and more on how to automate the workflows and processes that make the in-store experience seamless, Rustgate provides tools to build a profile about your customers to capture info and then easily create quotes with accurate pricing on the spot.

They also take it a step further and create purchase orders, and if it’s to multiple vendors, Rustgate creates PO’s for each one, and then retailers don’t have to worry about data entry.

“We’re working on how to take product catalogs and put them into the system in a consistent format, and then search it and find it easily,” Gregg explains. “And you don’t have to walk away to get pricing, which could make the customer’s interest wane. By offering it in the moment, it makes the customers want to keep going.”

This moment, which Gregg says is commonly referred to as the “sweat moment”—when sales associates try to calculate pricing while the customer is standing there waiting—is what Rustgate aims to eliminate.

Overall, he says Rustgate technology boils down to two things.

The first is operational excellence so that business owners get a better understanding of what’s going on in their business. 

“We’ll offer a pipeline to see what quotes are active, who’s working on it, and you’ll be able to see who your strong employees are and what quotes are at risk,” Gregg explains. “It will give insight into what’s going on in a way that dealers never had.”

The second focus is customer insight and acquisition. “We’re interested in what we can do to drive new customers with the data we put into the system—like creating a custom PDF document of a certain collection and determining if someone is interested in contemporary or modern styles,” Gregg says. “And the vendor can send an email to customers about things they might be interested in. We want to streamline that whole customer journey up to the point that they make the purchase.”

Right now, Rustgate is looking for retailer Beta testers to try out the technology for free and offer any feedback for improvement. If you’re interested in seeing what Rustgate is all about, contact Monica at monica@rustgate.com or visit rustgate.com

Alex Milstein

Alex Milstein is the editor in chief of Casual News Now as well as a contributor and social media coordinator for Home News Now. He previously served as senior editor of both Casual Living and Designers Today. Prior to that, Alex covered technology for Furniture Today, with a focus on augmented reality, e-commerce, and 3D visualization.

View all posts by Alex Milstein →

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