Why we built InvManage on photos your team already takes, not new cameras.

Rack-mounted cameras and edge processors are expensive to buy and slow to install. We bet that a phone in someone's pocket beats hardware nobody wants to maintain.

Every warehouse tech pitch we saw before building InvManage started the same way: a site visit, a hardware quote, and a multi-week install window before any value showed up. We wanted our first pilot operator to see a flagged photo on day one, not week six.

The Case Against Dedicated Hardware

Rack-mounted cameras assume a warehouse's layout stays put. In practice, aisles get reslotted, seasonal overflow gets rented, and suppliers' docks aren't yours to wire. Hardware that only covers the racks it was bolted to misses everything that happens outside its fixed field of view.

It also means every new facility is a new install project, with its own downtime, its own break-fix tickets, and its own capital cost before the software even starts working.

Betting on the Phone Already in Someone's Pocket

Our first version of InvManage skips all of that. A staff member photographs a shelf, pallet, or receiving dock during a walkthrough they were already doing, and the photo goes straight to our detection model.

“The best sensor in a warehouse is a person who already walks every aisle. We just gave them a place to send what they see.”

It's a trade-off, not a free lunch: we don't get continuous coverage the way a fixed camera would, and photo quality varies with lighting and angle. We think that trade is worth it for how fast a new facility can start using the product, and it's the honest starting point for an early-stage company.