Research programme
Project Beacon
Can products find their customers instead of businesses chasing them?
Most commerce tooling optimises the same five things: site, checkout, ads, search, email. All of it assumes you already know who the product is for and where it belongs.
Beacon works the other way round. Describe the product; the engine argues about where it is naturally valuable, and shows its reasoning.
This is not an anti-SEO claim. Search, marketplaces and recommendations still matter. The goal is narrower and more useful: spend less of the budget finding out what a week of research could have told you.
Reduce marketing guesswork by identifying the highest-potential customers and channels before the budget is committed.
The Opportunity Engine
Not “rank #1”. Where is this naturally valuable?
Where should this product exist?
Heritage tomato seed kit
Twelve open-pollinated varieties, paper packets, growing guide, £14.
Product DNA · drives every score below
Opportunity Map
Garden centres
98%
Seasonal footfall already arrives intending to buy exactly this category.
Farm shops
95%
Provenance story matches the shelf; low price point suits till-side placement.
Schools
82%
Growing is on the primary curriculum and germination is fast enough for a term.
Holiday parks
74%
Gift-shop impulse buy with a souvenir quality; weight and cost are trivial.
Hotels
69%
Kitchen-garden marketing and turndown gifts, but only for the independent end.
Museums
41%
Only relevant where the collection is horticultural or agricultural.
Construction
12%
No natural relationship beyond one-off landscaping gifts.
Sellability
Can people understand it?
93%
Can they trust it?
81%
Can they receive it easily?
98%
Will they buy twice?
64%
Market Gravity
Independent retailers
★★★★★Margin, story and seasonal display all align.
Amazon
★★★★★Findable, but commoditised against £2 packets with no story.
eBay
★★★★★Buyers arrive price-first; heritage framing is lost.
TikTok Shop
★★★★★Germination footage performs, though the season is short.
Facebook Marketplace
★★★★★Local, second-hand intent; wrong context entirely.
Demand Radar
People who might actually need this — and why.
RHS members
Self-identified growers with heritage-variety interest and disposable spend.
Allotment holders
Buy seed annually, share surplus, and influence a whole site's purchasing.
Primary schools
Need cheap, fast, safe classroom growing that survives a school holiday.
Community gardens
Buy in bulk, need varieties tolerant of inconsistent care.
Garden designers
Specify planting for clients and pass supplier names on.
Restaurants with kitchen gardens
Want varieties they cannot buy through catering wholesale.
Invisible Internet
Places with attention that nobody bids on.
Gardening podcasts
Sponsor reads reach committed growers at a fraction of paid social cost.
Seed libraries
Distribution network already built around exactly this product type.
Allotment association newsletters
Trusted, unmonetised, and read start to finish.
Botanical garden shops
Buyers actively seek non-commodity varieties for the shop floor.
School curriculum resource sites
Teachers search here, not on marketplaces.
Garden centre loyalty clubs
Existing permission to email a pre-qualified list.
The Missing Audience
Who have you forgotten?
Care homes
Horticulture is a standard activity programme with a real annual budget.
Food photographers
Buy unusual varieties as props and produce content that sells the product.
Chefs
Variety names carry menu value; they order early and talk publicly.
Seed libraries
Take donated and discounted stock, then create next season's demand.
Prototype · Scores below are produced by a rules engine over product attributes, not a trained model. Nothing here is a market forecast.
The other direction
The Reverse Search
The other direction. Businesses post the problem; manufacturers receive the opportunity instead of prospecting for it.
“I need sustainable packaging for 12kg ceramics.”
Independent homeware brand
Breakage above 4%. Wants recyclable, not compostable.
“I need refill stations for six sites.”
University estates team
Procurement framework, install and service included.
“I need recycled polymer at consistent colour.”
Injection moulder
Batch variation is currently the blocker, not price.
“I need a returns process for furniture.”
Regional retailer
Wants resale value assessed before the van is booked.
Why a marketplace seller might care
A seller listing across several marketplaces already knows the channels. What is rarely known is which products deserve which channel, and which buyers were never considered.
The question is not "here is a better storefront". It is: what if you knew where a product belonged before you built the listing?
What this does not claim
It does not replace search, marketplaces or advertising, and does not predict revenue.
Scores are structured arguments over product attributes. They are a starting point for research, not a result.
It is worth building only if it consistently prevents money being spent in the wrong channel. That is the thing we are trying to prove.