The Big Market with Almost No Competition: Offline Retail

01 /The Concept

Walk into almost any physical store and there’s a salesperson nearby – but no AI telling them what to say next. Aliado is changing that.

The startup hasn't locked down a vertical yet, which means its app works across a surprisingly wide range of physical stores: apparel, footwear, beauty and health products, automotive, and even residential real estate sales centers.

The app works simply: it listens to a salesperson's conversation with a customer, analyzes what's being said in real time, and surfaces recommendations for how to steer the conversation toward a closed deal.

During a conversation, the salesperson can glance at the screen for live coaching prompts: what to ask next, how to handle an objection.

But Aliado also issues critical alerts when a sale appears to be slipping away. When the probability of losing the deal crosses a threshold, the app sends a signal – giving the salesperson a cue to briefly check the screen for a suggested recovery move.

After the conversation ends, the app generates a debrief: an overall score, a breakdown of what went well, and a list of missed opportunities. That summary goes straight to WhatsApp or the salesperson's app. It also shows a running progress view – how the salesperson's conversational quality has improved over time. Managers have access to all of this data too.

Aliado was founded in Brazil in the spring of last year. The startup raised its first $100K shortly after, and just closed a new $2.6M round.

02 /Why It Matters

Most people in tech – by professional bias – assume that all meaningful commerce has migrated online or to video calls.

And most startups building AI sales tools reflect that assumption: they build for e-commerce platforms or video conferencing.

But here's the reality check: the overwhelming majority of retail sales still happen in physical stores. And this isn't just true for groceries.

Take apparel, footwear, and accessories. Globally, 79.1% of those sales happen offline; online accounts for only 20.9%. Even in Asia – where online penetration is the highest in the world – in-store clothing purchases still represent 76% of the total. In Africa, in-store accounts for 95.8% of apparel sales.

Startups paying attention to physical retail are doing quite well.

Siro ([covered here](/review/smotri-ka-ved-takie-prodazhi-tozhe-nuzhno-uluchshat)), for example, raised $50M last spring after pivoting its AI sales coach squarely toward offline – specifically toward HVAC technicians, electricians, and other tradespeople who sell their services door-to-door.

Siro's coach works on the same principle as Aliado: it records conversations between tradespeople and customers, then generates targeted recommendations for what could have gone better.

Meanwhile, other startups are moving into physical stores with a different angle – deploying in-store screens that play product videos, essentially turning the store floor into an advertising channel.

This format reportedly lifts store profit margins by 3–5%, both by driving sales of higher-margin products and by capturing co-op advertising revenue from featured brands. Looma ([related review](/review/strannaja-privychka-pokupatelej)) is building this in-store media network and has raised $30M, including $13M in December.

03 /Opportunities

The meta-point here is really an "anti-trend" – the reminder that offline hasn't surrendered nearly as much ground as the startup world tends to assume.

But understanding anti-trends is genuinely useful. As Jeff Bezos once put it: "I'm often asked what's going to change in the next ten years. But the more useful question is what won't change – because you can build strategies around things that are stable."

Worth noting: Bezos didn't take that advice literally. He still built an e-commerce company. His insight was that people's desire to buy things at the lowest possible price would never change – and the internet was just the vehicle for delivering that cheaper than any physical bookstore could.

The practical opportunity here is going back into offline. Most startups are ignoring it – which keeps competitive pressure low in spaces where the market size is anything but.

Which familiar offline sectors could absorb new technology right now to become dramatically more efficient? Where exactly, and how?