Central PA Residents Launch a Dynamic Local Product Locator

Central PA residents Joe Peffer and Kyle Slaymaker have teamed up to bring the public a faster, dynamic alternative to Google’s search term, “Find (insert term) Near Me.” 

The team are calling the software package “izitin.”  

You may know Slaymaker for his expertise in sales. He’s an author, who penned a few books on his technique that he has named, “The Slaymaker Method.” Slaymaker wrote “So You Think You Can Sell?” which made it to the number one slot on Business Short Reads on Amazon. His latest title, “Creating Dynamic Demand” was released just last year.  

Slaymaker has teamed up with Peffer, who has worked for Mapquest, Netscape and AOL, among other notable companies in roles from Product Management to Vice President of eCommerce.   

Peffer acts as CEO of izitin, with Slaymaker as head of sales. Peffer’s son Zachary, a student at Penn State and Sireesha Chamarthi, Head of Development, co-founded the company. Peffer describes the software as a “local product locator,” that is “hyper fast” and able to search products and services in a specified area. “Consumers, after discovering a product, can use their phone’s turn-by-turn guidance to arrive at the business offering the product,” Peffer said.   

Peffer goes on to explain that local product data is often stored in pdf format, or in images.  Google relies on data to be in hypertext format to enable their web crawlers to find and store data.  Izitin relies upon the business to enter data directly into a database. Using a database to store product data enables the technology developed by izitin to return searches in less than a second. “Finding the same information using google can require multiple steps and can be incomplete and outdated, since many businesses fail to keep their websites up to date,” said Peffer. 

Izitin enables businesses to easily update their product listings as their inventory changes through the mobile app interface.  “Data management is intuitive and requires very little time and effort and the changes are instantly reflected on the izitin app,” said Peffer, adding that the app is also designed to isolate different product types, such as wineries, restaurants, distilleries, food stands and trucks.  “These are just a few of the categories, and as new ones are suggested, they will be added,” he said. 

The goal of izitin is to be as synonymous to a local product search, as Amazon is to searching for a delivered product and is designed to promote local business activity by making those products easily discovered, according to Peffer. “The little old lady that puts out a stand selling tomatoes in front of her house can even use it because it’s free to anyone who has opted to join the list,” said Slaymaker. 

Peffer says that all distilleries, wineries and breweries in Central Pennsylvania are currently listed on izitin. “We also listed wineries in the Finger Lakes Region and smaller businesses in other parts of New York,” said Peffer, adding an example of how the consumer would use the app. “Let’s say you have a favorite type of gin, or you like Moscato.  You can search for it with izitin and it will tell you where you can get it. Or maybe you’re a foodie who is wishing for a dish like Lamb Ragu, for instance. Using izitin will prevent the customer from pulling up to the restaurant, gearing up to dig into a favorite dish, only to discover that last year’s menu was listed on the internet,” Peffer said. 

Izitin is putting small businesses on the map, literally. “A small local business called ‘The Soup Guy,’ based out of the Linglestown Firehouse, is using the izitin app to get the message out to their customers. Their soups change daily and they can easily and quickly get on the app to list them and also indicate when they run out of inventory,” said Peffer.  

Currently izitin obtains revenue through the display of Google Ads.  The company has also established the technology to create apps for associations as a Software as a Service (SaaS).  In this manner, izitin is able to quickly create specific mobile apps for wine trails, special interest groups, tourism boards, or state agencies at a fraction of the cost it would take to create the application from scratch.  Peffer shares a story about a NY state wine trail, which received a grant of $35,000 to create an app for the trail. “After they hired a company to start the process, the company never delivered.  That same wine trail could enlist izitin to create the app for a fraction of the cost, and because the technology already exists, it would be created and delivered in a month,” said Peffer. 

Features such as indicators for black and/or women-owned businesses will be added in the near term, as will product ratings.  “All these additions will enable local consumers to make better educated choices in their search for local products,” said Peffer.   

Right now, the team is spreading the word through cold calling, word of mouth, media and more, with a goal of globalizing the app. “It’s internationalized so that you can type in any language. In India, there are a ton of roadside stands, so there’s no reason why anybody can’t start using it today,” said Slaymaker.