$395 raised out of $65,000
Overview
Platform
Indiegogo
Backers
7
Start date
Nov 10, 2023
Close date
Jan 10, 2024
Concept

100% Carbon Neutral Deliveries. 100% Local Independent Businesses. 0% Commission.

Story

The Future of Sustainable Shopping

Barro is an ecosystem of small businesses, platformed on our app and delivered to you by a fleet of AI powered electric vehicles and a trusted work force of personal shoppers. We’re creating local jobs for local people, bringing small businesses closer to the people that love them most, and giving the power back to you. With Barro, you’re giving back to your community and the environment every time you shop.

We’re launching in Liverpool, UK this Winter, and we need your help to make it a success!

Barro will be available in:

  • South Liverpool: L7, L8, L15, L16, L17, L18, L19, L25
  • North Liverpool: L9, L10, L20, L21, L22, L23, L30

Our founders, Darren and Steven, created Barro during the COVID-19 pandemic. As community support for struggling small businesses gathered, the power of community and it’s importance for the success of small businesses became abundantly clear. Barro is designed to continue this support, helping businesses not just stay afloat but to flourish, amongst corporate competition and a rising cost of living.  

Using cutting-edge AI technology, our app allows you to shop from your local butcher, baker, grocer, and other independent stores all in one order, with only one delivery fee. Not only that, but we don’t charge our suppliers a single penny, so you know the money you spend is being invested right back into your community.

From fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, beverages, and confectionary, to fresh flowers and homeware, Barro will replace the need for supermarket shopping and restore a community centred shopping experience with local businesses at the heart of it.

Our Goals

The funds we raise will be used to bring Barro to as many people as possible, and will allow us to:

  • Deliver food bank donations for free during our pilot scheme and continue this support in future as a core part of the Barro ecosystem.
  • Help fuel our electric vehicles while we’re getting things off the ground.
  • Optimise support provided for local, independent businesses.
  • Offer 0% commission for our suppliers.
  • Further research and development of AI & machine learning algorithms, electronics, and software development.
  • Adapt apps to optimise accessibility for a diversity of business owners.
  • Provide support and training for our staff.

Your Impact

Help us to stop 1,000 people from going hungry, and we’ll be able to place the order for our first van!

Back us at £10 or above and we’ll deliver one food bank order for free. Share our campaign with your friends, and when we reach 1,000 backers we’ll have enough to put the deposit down on our pilot van, ensuring our food bank pledge can be delivered.

The more support our campaign receives, the more people we’ll be able to help!

 

Perks

As a token of our appreciation, we’re offering exclusive perks and offers for everyone that backs our campaign at Tier 2 and above! 

Become a ‘Founder’ (Tier 4 or above) and you’ll get Limited Edition merchandise that will never be produced again. Places on the Founder tier and above are very limited, so be sure to get them before it’s too late!

Important Notes on Perks

Food Bank Deliveries: Free food bank deliveries will be provided alongside Barro’s normal operations. Depending on the total number of deliveries, it may take us a while to deliver them all, but we’ll keep all backers up-to-date on our progress.

Merchandise: Images of merchandise are for illustrative purposes only. Although every effort will be made to produce merchandise that closely resembles that shown in the images, we cannot guarantee it will look exactly the same due to product availability at the time of production.

Luxury Hampers: These will be sourced from local independent businesses in the UK, and to ensure we’re minimising our environmental impact, we will only ship to UK addresses.

Events: Travel and accommodation costs associated with any events are not included. Backers at tiers that include events will need to make their own arrangements.

Social Media Shout-outs: Once you’ve backed us at ‘Supporter’ tier or above, simply share that you’ve backed our campaign on your favourite social media platforms and be sure to tag us @barroshopping – we will reply, ‘like’, ‘heart’, then proceed to digitally kiss your feet for being so wonderful.

 

Stretch Goals

Our initial goal of £65,000 will enable us to launch in South Liverpool. We’ll be covering most areas from Toxteth through to Garston. We’ve already got everything we need, except for a van (and some great people to drive it). With your help, we wont be charging local businesses any fees for our service. The faster we can reach this goal, the sooner Barro will be officially launched. Throughout the pilot we’ll perfect our processes, software and systems so that Barro will be a delight for everyone to use!

We want to bring Barro to the whole of the UK, and beyond, as quickly as possible. Here’s what we’d like to do if we exceed our initial goal.

1) Tech Upgrades

+£25,000 = £90,000 Total

The tech we’ve developed for use in the back of our Pilot Van is amazing, but there’s a lot more we could do. We will take everything we’ve learnt during the pilot and use it to create upgraded models of our electronics equipment, creating a more reliable, more efficient way to serve more shoppers than ever before. This will also ensure we keep our fees as low as possible into the future.

2) Dedicated Software Team

+£30,000 = £120,000 Total

As with most tech start-ups, we generally don’t have enough people. We’ve come a long way, but we’d love to be able to get some more great local talent on board so we can speed up delivering amazing new features for Barro’s website and apps. This stretch goal will enable us to grow the team in the short-term, and Barro’s revenue as it grows will be able to support this team in the longer-term.

3) Launch in North Liverpool

+£50,000 = £170,000 Total

We’ll commission a second van (and drivers) and launch Barro in North Liverpool as well, including Aintree, Maghull, Waterloo, Crosby, and Formby. Utilising our latest tech upgrades and with a dedicated team to support across Liverpool, Barro will be perfectly placed to help Liverpool businesses to thrive. We’ll also take on some dedicated new personnel to manage customer service and provide the best possible experience for our customers.

4) AI-Powered Product Alternatives

+£20,000 = £190,000

We understand one of the biggest problems with shopping digitally is not getting the things you ordered, or being given alternatives automatically that aren’t what you needed. It often means you have to go to a shop yourself anyway, which defeats the object of doing it online! We’ve already created some AI-powered tools to make this experience better for Barro customers, but there’s soooo much more we can do. We’re going to create the world’s most sophisticated, machine-learning algorithm for alternative product suggestions.

5) AI-Powered Dynamic Pricing and Route Planning

+£35,000 = £225,000

Barro works best by bringing together as many local businesses and customers as possible, but this naturally creates a logistical headache. We’ve already created some really clever tech to reduce this headache, but we will continue to use AI to do so much more! We want to dynamically calculate which local businesses to pick up from, turning our operation from carbon-neutral to carbon-negative, and enabling us to offer lower prices to customers by creating efficiencies the logistics world has only ever dreamed of.

 

Help Spread the Word

Not able to contribute right now? Already contributed? Helping us spread the word makes a huge impact.

Share our campaign, tell your friends and family, and show your support via our social media channels! Even a simple like can help us spread our message!

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