Each month, our Leaderboard reports the best performers from among 1,500 indie stores, 3,000 brands, and 300,000 products with no man hours. Leaderboard results are automatically tallied and published on the first of each month; it’s as if I have an omnipotent robot that does this work for me. Automation like this is crucial to running a successful business. 

Amazon, Walmart, and other retail giants spend massively on automation because this will decide the winners. In 2025, retailers will spend over $22 billion on automation. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Walmart is looking to automate its entire supply chain. It’s not enough to set up a website with a wedding registry these days; you must ensure that automation is built in. A website must automatically update pictures and prices; add new products and remove discounted items; display news about your brands and marketing offers to customers via email and text message.

The goal is to invest in solutions and tools that automate manual processes so you spend fewer dollars on manually entering info. Spending money on manual work is a death sentence. Large retailers realized this years ago and have a huge head start. Here’s how you can help your business: Make a list of all costs and features associated with your website and registry and find a service that can automate it. 

Money spent to automate your business is your best investment. My e-commerce platform, Shop Local, automates many of our indie retailers’ website needs. For example, our Product Syncing service, which automates website product updates, saves a retailer on average $36,898 a year on labor costs which frees up money to run their brick-and-mortar business and fend off Amazon. Adding automation requires upfront manual work. Each year, we spend 20,000 hours on improving our shopping platform. It took me and my team months to code the Leaderboard before it could be generated automatically. Even now, we spend time improving it. The best way to ensure we’ll be in business tomorrow is to build our robots today.