Wayvia is a commerce-enablement company that helps brands navigate and optimize the complex, omnichannel world of retail. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Wayvia co-founder and CEO Anthony Ferry to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Anthony Ferry’s Background
Could you tell me more about yourself? Ferry said:
“I consider myself an entrepreneur through and through. I’ve founded four companies and am involved in several others. In the early 2000s, I quit my tech job and, along with a couple of friends, founded my first company, Neudesic. It was during the dotcom bust and nobody in their right mind would have started a business then but we were young and willing to take a risk. We defied the odds and made it work, eventually selling the company to IBM.”
“I’ve built businesses in e-commerce, AI and enterprise software. But I’d say the one thing that’s consistent is I’ve always been curious about how people make decisions and I want to help them use data to make better ones.”
“I’m also a father of six, so I see firsthand how younger generations are interacting with technology differently and how it’s changing consumer behavior.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Ferry explained:
“At Wayvia, we’re focused on helping brands build a smarter path to revenue. E-commerce keeps getting more and more complex. The conventional idea of a sales funnel just doesn’t reflect the reality of a world where consumers can start their purchasing journey on a brand’s website, a marketplace, social media, connected TV, and now an AI chatbot. We give brands the visibility, tools and intelligence they need to make sense of that landscape.”
“We bring together omnicommerce data to power analytics, help brands optimize shopping journeys and enable AI solutions. And our retail intelligence platform offers real-time insights on pricing, availability and channel performance to drive smarter, faster decisions.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges are facing e-commerce right now? Ferry acknowledged:
“E-commerce is going through enormous changes. After the huge spike in demand in the pandemic when companies couldn’t grow quickly enough, there was then a pullback across the entire industry. Now we’re seeing AI completely changing the game again, both for the consumers’ path to purchase and how businesses operate internally. In the past few weeks OpenAI has launched a toolkit enabling brands to integrate into its results or deploy a customized version of it on their websites. This adds another channel that brands must manage and integrate, adding to the complexity of comparing data across all sales channels.”
“One of the key things I’ve learned in my 25 years as a founder is that you have to stay ahead of change. So we have pivoted rapidly over the past few years. For most of our existence, we were known as PriceSpider and created a powerhouse consumer shopping engine, including the original Where to Buy button. But we believe that the future of e-commerce will be shaped as much by intelligent systems as human decisions, so we have evolved into an AI-native commerce intelligence engine. In July, we launched Wayvia to highlight our new role in helping brands understand the path to purchase in a landscape that’s more complex than ever.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Ferry noted:
“We started the company as a consumer tool built to crawl retail websites, compare prices and help shoppers find the best deal. We even launched a barcode-scanning app to make price comparisons easier. Our goal was to make shopping simpler. But we quickly realized that we could do more for brands. That’s when we shifted gears and launched our Where to Buy technology, enabling brands to connect their shoppers directly with retailers through real-time pricing and availability.”
“Since then, we’ve evolved alongside the commerce landscape, supporting brands through the rise of mobile, omnichannel and retail media. And now, we’re helping brands navigate the next seismic shift: AI.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Wayvia’s most significant milestones? Ferry cited:
“We recently launched the industry’s first omnicommerce model context protocol, which is AI infrastructure that’s built on more than two decades of market data. In total, we’ve delivered over a dozen e-commerce industry firsts in Where to Buy, price monitoring, omnicommerce intelligence, shoppable media and AI-powered commerce. We’ve also made several acquisitions, including ORIS Intelligence, Commerce Connector and Hatch.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Ferry concluded:
“We work with thousands of companies, but an example that springs to mind is a leading hardware brand that used our Where To Buy button. Using the data from that button, they could see their shoppers were ready to purchase faster. To build on that intent, we partnered with their most active retailer to simplify the buying process. We added a one-click Add to Cart functionality to their Where To Buy experience, so shoppers could go straight into the retailer’s cart with a single click. The result was a 70% lift in leads and sales, and a smoother, faster shopping journey.”
