TL;DR: I built Partle, a search engine for products in physical stores near you. Here's why.
A few weeks ago I needed an M2.5 threaded rod. Stainless steel, about 10cm long. If you don't know what that is, picture a skinny metal rod, 2.5mm thick, threaded all the way through. Not exactly rare. You'd expect any decent hardware store to carry one.
The first store didn't have it. Minimum M3. Alright, no big deal, I'll try somewhere else.
The second store didn't have it either. Same thing. M3 and up.
By the third store I was starting to question my sanity. Is M2.5 really that uncommon? Am I the only person who's ever needed one of these?
Fourth store. Nothing. At this point I'd spent the entire afternoon on this. An afternoon. For a threaded rod. I'd driven across town and back, parked four times, walked through four stores, talked to four different people, and I had absolutely nothing to show for it.
So I went home, opened AliExpress, found exactly what I needed for €2.66, and waited. Nine days.
Nine days for a part that weighs almost nothing and costs less than a coffee. And the whole time, I couldn't shake the feeling that some shop in my city had a drawer full of these things. I just didn't know which one. There was no way to know.
That's what really got to me. Not the wait, not the €2.66. The fact that I wasted an entire afternoon driving around my city for nothing, when the answer was probably a 5-minute drive away the whole time. The information just didn't exist anywhere.
What actually works
Google Maps is the obvious starting point. Search your product, see what stores come up nearby. The problem is you get a list of stores, not a list of stores that actually have your thing. You're picking places to drive to and hoping for the best. Which is exactly what I did, four times.
Calling ahead is something I should have done and didn't. Most small shop owners will check if they have something in stock. "Do you carry M2.5 threaded rods?" takes 30 seconds on the phone. Would have saved me an afternoon. Don't make my mistake.
Big chain websites sometimes let you check stock at your local branch. Leroy Merlin does this, Bauhaus too. Works well for chains, but the small independent shops barely have a website. And those are exactly the shops most likely to carry the niche stuff you can't find anywhere else.
The thing I ended up building
That afternoon annoyed me enough to do something about it. So I started building Partle, a search engine for products in physical stores near you. You type what you need, it tells you where to go buy it. No more driving around hoping.
It already covers a good number of stores with real prices and stock, and it's what I wish existed before I wasted that afternoon.
If you're curious: partle.rubenayla.xyz
The rod eventually arrived from China. Nine days and €2.66 for a part that was probably sitting on a shelf five minutes from my house the whole time.
Where this is going
Honestly, I don't think we'll be searching for products much longer. Not ourselves, anyway. We're already starting to ask AIs to do things for us. "Find me an M2.5 threaded rod near me" is exactly the kind of thing you'll tell your AI assistant, and it'll just handle it. Or better yet, the AI might be the one to figure out you need the M2.5 in the first place, find it, and order it before you even think about it.
But for that to work, the AI needs somewhere to look. It needs a place it can talk to, search products, check availability, maybe even save things for later. That's really what Partle is built around. Not just a website for humans, but APIs and tools that AIs can plug into directly. So when you ask your assistant to find something, it actually can.
We're not far from that. And when it happens, nobody will have to waste an afternoon on a threaded rod ever again.
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