TideLink

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AI chatbot (Marea)
Marketplace filters
Business Dashboard
Marketplace

Inspiration We started TideLink with a simple problem: a small business on a remote island might make something people around the world want, but actually getting that product to them can be expensive and complicated. High shipping costs, limited routes, and unpredictable demand can make it difficult for these businesses to compete globally. We wanted to build something that didn't just help businesses sell more, but also helped them sell and ship smarter. What It Does TideLink connects island businesses with global customers through personalized product recommendations, dynamic pricing, and optimized shipping. Customers can adjust things like their budget, destination, and sustainability preferences, and TideLink recommends products based on those choices. At the same time, the platform looks for orders that can share shipping routes, helping reduce costs. We also built the TideLink AI Assistant, which lets users simply explain what they need instead of having to understand all the data themselves. It can help customers find products and help business owners understand pricing, inventory, demand, and shipping decisions. How We Built It We built TideLink as a connected marketplace rather than a set of separate features. Our recommendation engine considers customer preferences along with inventory and shipping compatibility, while our shipping system groups compatible orders and finds more efficient routes. We then connected these features to the AI assistant so users could interact with the platform in a much simpler way. Challenges & What We Learned One of our biggest challenges was getting pricing, recommendations, inventory, and shipping to work together. A change in one area can affect several others, so we had to think about the platform as one connected system. Through building TideLink, we learned a lot about recommendation systems, route optimization, and designing AI tools around real users. Most importantly, we learned that sometimes the best solution isn't just optimizing one part of a problem — it's finding a way to connect all the parts together.