{"id":675640,"date":"2026-11-05T10:42:21","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T10:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675640\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T10:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T10:42:21","slug":"from-photo-to-online-shop-in-three-minutes-irish-start-up-harnesses-ai-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675640\/","title":{"rendered":"From photo to online shop in three minutes: Irish start-up harnesses AI \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eamonn Grant got his first taste of the transformative power of technology<\/a> when he was introduced to digital mapping as a geography student at UCD<\/a> in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Digital mapping was in its infancy at the time, and Grant\u2019s experience was to have a big influence on his subsequent career, using technology to push the boundaries in ecommerce and technology-enabled services.<\/p>\n

Grant\u2019s CV includes stints as head of ecommerce at Musgrave<\/a>, European commercial director for Samsung Electronics and senior vice-president for corporate development at global ecommerce platform, ESW. <\/p>\n

His latest venture is the start-up RunCommerce, an AI<\/a>-powered platform that automates the mountain of manual tasks currently faced by online retailers and ecommerce brands.<\/p>\n

\u201cRunCommerce automates everything someone sees on the page, while on the technical side of things, we make the page visible for SEO [search-engine optimisation] purposes,\u201d Grant says. \u201cWe did a demo recently at a conference where we took a gentleman\u2019s jacket, put it on the table, took a photograph of it, and three minutes later it was on a website with a video of a model wearing it walking down the Champs Elysees.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you can imagine, this is of huge interest to fashion and apparel brands, especially those with a large volume of products,\u201d Grant says. \u201cThe automation can replace location shoots and dramatically reduce the time it takes to get a product from the factory to a website. Minutes versus months.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRunCommerce represents a shift from people-intensive ecommerce towards AI-assisted execution, and the idea came from repeatedly seeing ecommerce teams spending enormous amounts of time on manual operational work instead of growing their businesses,\u201d Grant says.<\/p>\n

\u201cRetailers have invested in numerous software products, but their employees still have to move between disconnected systems and manually co-ordinate much of the work. <\/p>\n

\u201cTeams can spend large amounts of time updating information, assembling reports, managing routine processes and resolving issues between systems. As the business grows, these operational demands often require additional staff and create further complexity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Advances in AI opened up the opportunity for Grant to radically rethink the manual model, but instead of simply adding another dashboard, he built RunCommerce around intelligent agents that can understand what is happening across a retail business and actively take on administrative tasks.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Rise of AI shopping \u2018agents\u2019 set to transform online shoppingOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cMost ecommerce platforms and applications are designed as tools that people must operate,\u201d he says. \u201cThey provide dashboards, reports or individual workflows, but employees still have to interpret the information, decide what to do and complete the work. RunCommerce is designed around execution. It can work across existing systems and complete approved operational tasks rather than simply presenting data or generating recommendations. RunCommerce is all about the operational side of things and making it easier, faster and more effective to run an ecommerce business.\u201d<\/p>\n

RunCommerce is not Grant\u2019s first start-up. In 2006 he founded (and subsequently sold) what became Ireland\u2019s largest online florist. \u201cWe have ramped up RunCommerce quite quickly, but having had a lot of experience starting things from scratch throughout my career, we\u2019ve done it carefully, mindful of the fact that you can\u2019t do everything from day one,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have an ultimate goal but intend on getting there by eating the elephant in small pieces, starting with content, imagery, video and SEO.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grant gives the example of a shopper looking at a product page online showing a jacket. Behind that one page there can be a lot of information including sizing and colour options, a description of the item, reviews, photographs and video. In addition, each page may have to be translated or tweaked for different markets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we are now in terms of ecommerce is only the start of what\u2019s about to happen with agentic AI and everything else that\u2019s coming with AI personal assistants and so on. Basically, the whole business is going to be turned on its head,\u201d Grant says. \u201cWith our platform, retailers will be able to respond and grow without expanding their operational teams at the same rate. This has the potential to change the economics of running an ecommerce business, particularly for established mid-market retailers and brands.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Surge in ecommerce means we need to reimagine retail on the streets of our towns and citiesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

RunCommerce was formally established earlier this year following 12 months\u2019 development. The venture was bootstrapped and largely funded by Grant\u2019s consultancy work with support from D\u00fan Laoghaire Rathdown local enterprise office. Grant estimates the investment in developing the product to date at around \u20ac750,000 plus a significant amount of founder time. The company is revenue-generating and funded for now. A Series A round is planned for 2027. <\/p>\n

RunCommerce earns its income from a recurrent monthly fee based on the size and complexity of a customer\u2019s business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a retailer has 20,000 SKUs [stock keeping units] and is selling in 15 countries, that\u2019s very different from five SKUs in one market. But for now our focus is on businesses with an online turnover of \u20ac10 million to \u20ac15 million. At a future date we hope to have a product that\u2019s suitable for smaller operators,\u201d Grant says. \u201cSome of the really big players may do what we\u2019re doing for themselves, but for a lot of businesses it wouldn\u2019t make sense when you can buy the solution off the shelf from us and we will maintain it.\u201d<\/p>\n

RunCommerce is based at Nova UCD, where Grant has recently taken part in the AI ecosystem accelerator programme run jointly with CeADAR, Ireland\u2019s Centre for Applied AI. Asked about the benefits of participation, Grant cites access to seasoned experts as well as the networking opportunities and the fact that there are deadlines to keep founders focused when a hundred other things are vying for their attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think getting started has been easier this time, as the State supports are far more advanced now, and they are generous and can really add up,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, there is an issue around joining the dots between them. That\u2019s not as easy as it could be. The money is there, but accessing it can take a lot of time and effort, and that\u2019s not ideal for a business that\u2019s scaling quickly. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy experience of the support system is that you have very interested, very dedicated and genuine people who want to help, but they can be constrained by how things are structured.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eamonn Grant got his first taste of the transformative power of technology when he was introduced to digital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,16122,61,91347,60,80],"class_list":["post-675640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-digital-solutions","tag-ie","tag-innovators-to-watch","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}