From photo to online shop in three minutes: Irish start-up harnesses AI

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

Digital mapping was in its infancy at the time, and Grant’s experience was to have a big influence on his subsequent career, using technology to push the boundaries in ecommerce and technology-enabled services.

Grant’s CV includes stints as head of ecommerce at Musgrave, European commercial director for Samsung Electronics and senior vice-president for corporate development at global ecommerce platform, ESW.

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

“RunCommerce 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,” Grant says. “We did a demo recently at a conference where we took a gentleman’s 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.

“As you can imagine, this is of huge interest to fashion and apparel brands, especially those with a large volume of products,” Grant says. “The 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.”

“RunCommerce 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,” Grant says.

“Retailers have invested in numerous software products, but their employees still have to move between disconnected systems and manually co-ordinate much of the work.

“Teams 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.”

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.

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“Most ecommerce platforms and applications are designed as tools that people must operate,” he says. “They 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.”

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

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.

“Where we are now in terms of ecommerce is only the start of what’s about to happen with agentic AI and everything else that’s coming with AI personal assistants and so on. Basically, the whole business is going to be turned on its head,” Grant says. “With 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.”

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RunCommerce was formally established earlier this year following 12 months’ development. The venture was bootstrapped and largely funded by Grant’s consultancy work with support from Dún Laoghaire Rathdown local enterprise office. Grant estimates the investment in developing the product to date at around €750,000 plus a significant amount of founder time. The company is revenue-generating and funded for now. A Series A round is planned for 2027.

RunCommerce earns its income from a recurrent monthly fee based on the size and complexity of a customer’s business.

“If a retailer has 20,000 SKUs [stock keeping units] and is selling in 15 countries, that’s very different from five SKUs in one market. But for now our focus is on businesses with an online turnover of €10 million to €15 million. At a future date we hope to have a product that’s suitable for smaller operators,” Grant says. “Some of the really big players may do what we’re doing for themselves, but for a lot of businesses it wouldn’t make sense when you can buy the solution off the shelf from us and we will maintain it.”

RunCommerce is based at Nova UCD, where Grant has recently taken part in the AI ecosystem accelerator programme run jointly with CeADAR, Ireland’s 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.

“I 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,” he says. “However, there is an issue around joining the dots between them. That’s not as easy as it could be. The money is there, but accessing it can take a lot of time and effort, and that’s not ideal for a business that’s scaling quickly.

“My 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.”