Carto
Every small shop can now
field a full team.
A register that never takes a cut of the counter. Eight skilled AI employees as the upgrade — always on, no downtime, closing sales around the clock. Starting with the one that takes the order.
The work was always there.
The payroll never was.
Four jobs, one owner
Sales, posts, books, stock. Four wages a small shop has never been able to carry — so the owner does all four, at midnight.
They pay to reach their own customers
The big sites bring the crowd and keep the relationship. The shop pays a cut on every order and never owns the buyer.
Their tools don't talk
A till here, a website there, a spreadsheet for stock, a chatbot that dodges questions instead of selling. Nothing shares a brain.
All three come down to what a small shop can afford. And what a small shop can afford just changed.
Staff just became
something you can
switch on.
Selling, answering, promoting, counting, keeping the books — every one of those jobs can now be held by a skilled, expertly trained AI employee. Priced like software, delivered like a hire.
The old maths
One salesperson: $3,000+/month, one language, one shift, one customer at a time.
The new maths
One AI employee: tens of dollars a month, every language, every hour, every customer at once.
A conversation that can
take an order is the
whole shop in one place.
The smallest useful piece of selling isn't a product page or a checkout button. It's one conversation that carries a purchase all the way through — and it holds everything the business needs to make the sale.
Knows what it sells
The shop's real products, prices and stock — not a scraped list of questions.
Knows who it's selling to
Takes the name and number, and remembers them next time.
Knows how to finish
Holds the basket, takes the payment, writes up the order.
And it fits anywhere a link fits — a page you send, a corner of the shop's own site, chat inside the app, a QR code on a table. One employee, many doors, one memory.
Closer sells.
Chatbots were built to get rid of questions. Closer was built to take the order — every hour of the day.
- Answers from the real shelves — real products, real prices, real stock.
- Takes a name every time — name and phone are required before an order exists. A rule in the system, not a request.
- Writes a real order — into the same place as the counter sales.
- Keeps the customer — saved with how often they buy and what they've spent.
- Answers in their language — the sale is never lost in translation.
Then it turns around and
sells to them again.
Every conversation leaves a customer behind. When a sold-out favourite comes back in, or something new lands that they'd want, the same employee goes back to exactly the people who'd care. Designed, and building after the first shops.
Not a blast
Who gets it comes from what these customers actually bought and asked for.
The owner reads it first
It writes the message and waits. Nothing goes out without a human yes — that's a rule in the system.
Same thread, same memory
The reply comes back to Closer with everything intact. No handing the customer to a stranger.
Winning a customer is the expensive half of retail. We make the second sale nearly free — and the shop's own customer list becomes the thing of value, not ours.
Eight skilled employees.
One monthly bill.
Closer brings in the money. The other seven keep the shop running behind it, every hour of the week.
Closer
Sells and takes the order
Desk
Answers the same ten questions
Books
Keeps the books
Promoter
Writes the posts and offers
Keeper
Watches the stock
Stylist
Writes up the products
Advisor
Tells you how the week went
Pilot
Brings you what needs deciding
The owner is always the boss. Anything that moves money or reaches a customer needs a yes first — a hard rule in the system, not a setting someone can turn off.
We don't sell AI.
We give away the register.
A baker doesn't wake up wanting artificial intelligence. She wakes up needing to ring up a sale. So that part is free — and we never take a cut of it, now or later.
Off every counter sale. Not an opening offer — it's how the business works.
Added to card fees. The shop pays the card company what the card company charges.
To hire the first employee, once the register is already running the shop.
The register wins the trust and the data. The team earns the money. Every conversation brings a customer in; every customer makes the next sale cheaper.
Four ways we earn,
none of them a tax on the counter.
| Line | Price | When we charge it |
|---|---|---|
| The register | 90 days free, then $9 / month | Per register. The way in — and a floor under every account. |
| One employee | $19 / month | The shop hires a single AI employee. |
| All eight | $49 / month | The shop runs the whole team. |
| All eight, register waived | Every register free again | The team covers the register fee — moving up costs less than standing still. |
| Our shopping app | Half of Amazon's category rate | 7.5% typical. Only when Carto's own shopping app brought the customer. |
We charge for the team, not for their sales
The shop's own counter and the customers it found itself cost it nothing. We're paid for the employees we supply, not for the work they did without us.
Priced like wages, delivered like software
Set against what a person would cost, sold as a monthly price. Every action is counted, so we know exactly what each employee costs to run.
Opening prices for the US.
One system underneath all of it.
Everything reads the same products, the same stock count and the same books. That shared spine is why an employee can be trusted to quote a price or promise something is on the shelf.
The customer app
Where people find the shop and order.
The owner's app
Products, orders, register, stock, books, offers, the team.
The register
Open and cash out, offline cash, one stock count.
Getting paid
Runs on Stripe. Money lands in the shop's own bank account — we never hold a balance.
Posting it out
Order to printed label without leaving the app, with local couriers.
The driver app
For shops that deliver their own orders.
Everyone else sells
one piece of the shop.
| What they hand over | What's missing |
|---|---|
| A till | Nobody selling once the shutters are down. |
| A website | Finding customers and staffing it stay with the owner. |
| A big marketplace | Customers, in exchange for the customer and the margin. |
| A chatbot | Dodges questions; never holds a basket or takes an order. |
| Carto | The counter untouched, the team hired, the customer kept. |
We compete on staff, not warehouses. The shop keeps the deliveries, keeps the customer, and keeps the margin we never take.
This is not a prototype.
The whole sale works, start to finish
A conversation has taken a real order — in more than one language — kept the customer, filed it against the right shop, and recorded which employee made the sale.
The money path is wired
Card payment through Stripe: priced by the system, landed in the shop's own account, our cut taken at the moment of the sale, confirmed back to us.
The counter is real
Opening and cashing out, refunds, offline cash and one shared stock count — run on real hardware in a real shop on real trading days.
The system is hardened
Six services on shared infrastructure, put through a security sprint and checked in production. Every action an employee takes has been counted from day one.
No revenue yet, on purpose: we built it first, so the first shop signs up to something finished.
From built to booked.
| Stage | What it means | Where it is |
|---|---|---|
| Money moves | Card payments and posting orders out, working all the way through | Under way |
| Sells itself | A stranger can sign up, set up and start selling without us | Next |
| First shops | Real US shops trading on Carto | 2026 |
| Earning | Monthly plans running, first money booked | 2026 |
Done, for us, is one real American small business running its whole day on Carto — and Carto getting paid for it.
Every small shop
gets the team the
big ones have.
The corner store with a salesperson who never sleeps and speaks every language on the street. The bakery with a bookkeeper. The garage with someone watching the parts shelf.
Not by making them bigger. By putting a full team within reach of every one of them.