The short version: every time a product a shopper loved goes out of stock and later returns, there's a sale sitting on the table — and today nothing connects the two. Close that loop and you recapture revenue you're already losing, without buying a single new customer.
A shopper finds a product they love. Next visit, it's out of stock, so they substitute or leave. A week later it's back on your shelf — but the shopper has no idea, so they never return for it. That's not a lost customer; it's a specific, identifiable sale that simply never gets made because nobody told the one person who wanted it.
The size of the opportunity is one line:
Recaptured / month = monthly visitors × % who save a favorite × % of favorites that go out-and-back-in-stock × alert→purchase rate × average ticket
As an illustrative example only (not a claim — replace every input with your own POS and menu figures): 1,500 visitors × 20% who opt in × 15% out-and-back × 12% who buy on the alert × a $50 ticket ≈ ~$270/month recaptured. The exact figure isn't the point; the structure is — a handful of otherwise-lost tickets a month covers the cost of the layer several times over, and real numbers tend to make the case stronger, not weaker.
It needs two things working together: shoppers saving what they love, and a system watching your live inventory for the moment a saved item comes back — then telling exactly the people who wanted it. (To be straight: those proactive alerts are on the roadmap and switch on with live inventory access; the recommendation engine that gets shoppers saving favorites in the first place is live today.)
Because each recaptured sale starts from a known shopper and a known product, it's measurable. An attribution view ties the order back to the alert that drove it — so the value shows up as numbers on a dashboard, which is exactly what makes a subscription easy to renew.
No — the math is illustrative and depends on your real traffic, opt-in, restock, and conversion. The point is the structure: a few recaptured tickets a month covers the cost.
The proactive alerts are roadmap and switch on with live inventory access. The engine that gets shoppers saving favorites (the input to recapture) is live today.
Each recaptured sale starts from a known shopper + product, so an attribution view ties the order back to the alert that drove it.