Cold Start

A search box is a test the customer fails. It asks them to already know the word for the thing they are trying to buy, and a beginner does not have that word, so they leave. Cold Start asks 6 questions about the person instead: their size, what they want to do, where they will be doing it, what they have already. None of them mention a product.

From those answers it sizes the main item to the person, picks everything that has to go with it, and returns the list priced against stock the shop is actually holding. Not a category page. A basket, complete, in the order it would be used.

Where the answer turns on something the customer could not reasonably know, it decides and gives the reason in a line. That line is the part that matters. A recommendation without a reason is a guess the customer has to take on faith, and a beginner has no way to check it, so the reason is what makes the basket theirs rather than ours.

If nothing on the shelf fits, it does not force a compromise. It writes the specification and passes it to whoever can make or source it, which is usually the better sale for the shop and the only right answer for the customer. The shop-facing skin sits on top and carries the shop’s own name. Cold Start is the engine underneath, and the engine is the thing that moves to the next shop.