Made an app to help organize and track your boxes and storage items

[sunnydaze72]

Hey guys, I’m a UCLA student working on an app as a way to give people a much easier and efficient way to label and track their boxes without them having to write and rewrite everything on the side of their box. The way it works is you enter or scan your handwritten labels and then you type and/or snap a pic of everything that you’re putting inside. That way, when you’re unpacking, you can immediately know what’s inside the box, instead of having to rely on scrawled text on the outside. In addition, if you are looking for an item, but not sure where it is, you can use the search bar to find out exactly what box to look for, and where that box is located/supposed to be located. The intent of this app is to make it a lot easier to pack and unpack when you have large amounts of boxes and items to keep track of, and also to make it easier to find items within those containers.

^ That was the marketing blurb. The app is called BoX-Ray (www.box-ray.com - install doesn’t work through reddit browser, so if you want to test it out, open in Safari/Chrome) Now here’s the business stuff:

There are a few inventory apps out there. However, they seem to be split pretty hard into B2B and B2C. The biggest B2B competitor is Sortly, but their app has horrible UI/UX (from recent reviews), and they got rid of their cheapest plan, which B2C was using, so now they are strictly B2B. There are no big players in B2C. There are a lot of smaller apps, but they are more side-project vibe (not that mine isn’t also a side-project lol), by which I mean they do almost no marketing and are slow to improve their app. I’m using a no-code builder, which means that I can build out new features and ship them as quickly as I can come up with them.

Right now, I’m just running paid advertisements (below $200) and posting on various subreddits to get first customers/testers. Once I finish validating and establish a better retention rate, I’m going to use a referral system to push organic growth. Premium is for over a certain amount of boxes, and being able to share boxes and items with >1 other person. Hoping to justify monthly charges by letting them know I pay a monthly fee myself for online database, etc.

I’m a great choice for fixing this problem, because I’ve dealt with boxes my entire childhood. My parent is in the Army, so I’ve moved houses every 2-3 years since I was 5, and I know how shitty it is to pack and unpack and not know where anything is. I’m now a CS major and entrepreneurship minor, so I think I can combine the two to grow this enough to pay for rent (hopefully)

 

[mcarans]

@sunnydaze72 This is a good idea and I could have used it when we moved recently.. We had 42 boxes and one went missing but we don't know what is in it so we're still like 'where are the tea towels? Ahhhh..."

I would think that this could be a good value add for moving companies to provide to their customers, i t might be worth speaking to some local companies to see whether it could be something that they might be willing to promote to their customers?

Advantage for them would also be that their customers would also be more organised and if there were any issues with boxes going missing, it would be a source of truth for what's in there and people couldn't claim for a PS5 going missing if it wasn't in the app

 

[sunnydaze72]

@mcarans Darn, it seems like you would have been a perfect use case for me!

I have considered partnerships with moving companies, but I got too lazy to start actively pursuing it haha. But for the claims, would the packers be taking the pictures or the customers? My only concern is if the packers have to take pics for each box, they might take much longer, and then stop using the app because of it.

 

[mcarans]

@sunnydaze72 I still think it's the people who are moving that are taking the pics as they pack their own boxes (assuming they do?) I'm not in the US, so I'm not sure whether it's common to employ a company to both pack and move boxes?

Once people graduate college, they move few years, rather than every semester..

As it's an infrequent event, people who are moving probably wouldn't know to look for your app.. They have a million other things to think about.. And a referral scheme may not work because people don't move at the same time as their friends

The moving company is your direct channel to customers who would benefit from the app at the time they are moving..

 

[sunnydaze72]

@mcarans Oh, that's a good point. In my experience, at least, the moving companies hired packers locally since they knew that area the best, and then the packers packed and loaded everything for you. However, I just looked it up and it depends on if you've hired full-service moving, so I definitely will start considering those partnerships. Thanks for the suggestion!

Good point about infrequent moving! It definitely makes sense that people wouldn't really be moving at the same time that often. However, I do have 2 additional target demographics, which are those with storage units, and those who just want to organize their houses/attics/basements. The referral system would be targeting more of that segment than movers. (I realize I didn't mention my demographics in the original post, my bad haha)

It does seem like moving companies would be the best bet for the moving demographic though, so thanks again for the suggestion!

 

[mcarans]

@sunnydaze72 Ok cool, yep I would see that storage facilities could also be worth talking to..
If you could white label your app for them, it would be a big value add

 

[graceseeker164]

@sunnydaze72 It says I can scan the label on the box. I don't see in the app where to do that. Samsung S6.

 

[sunnydaze72]

@graceseeker164 Hi! So the plugin I used to scan labels was pretty slow and most people weren't scanning anyways, so I decided to remove that feature. Sorry for the inconvenience!

 

[mr_cy90]

@sunnydaze72 Is this app still working? I tried to reset my password, and the email link that was sent to do so said it was invalid once I clicked on it. It was a great app, but if you have discontinued working on it, or doing any support, I’d appreciate it if you let us know. Thanks.

 

[sunnydaze72]

@mr_cy90 Hi, I am still working on BoX-Ray, but not full-time, since I am still in college. I am not sure why it isn't working, I tested it out and it brought me to the password reset page. Please give it another go, and if it still doesn't work, you can reach out to me at youngghee@box-ray.com and I'll take another look at it!