Product Guru was launched in September of last year after founder Simon Coyle spotted a gap in the market. “After running my own companies for nearly 20 years,” he said, “I have first-hand experience of how difficult it can be for emerging brands to get their products in front of retail buyers.

“Retailers have lots of customer-facing modern technologies in their stores,” he continued, such as automated checkouts or digital ads – but Product Guru is the first technology platform to shake-up their back-office product discovery operations and make it easier to discover the latest trends and find exciting new products for their customers.”

Coyle says the £300,000 investment will allow Product Guru to develop its platform for both buyers and suppliers using analytics and intelligent recommmendations, while marketing the service too a much wider audience.

“Buyers are pushed for time,” Coyle added. “Product Guru makes it quicker, easier and – ultimately – cheaper for them to connect with potential suppliers.”

Product Guru operates a “freemium” business model, providing basic features free for suppliers and retailers, with a subscription service available to brands providing sales analytics, product engagement statistics, product trends and other rich-data analytics.

Could Product Guru be the next big thing? We’re certainly intrigued.