Home centers
In a home center the problem stops being finding the item and becomes choosing among the several that fit. Tablia searches the whole catalogue, ranks the candidates and returns the quote for the salesperson to check.
The customer asks three stores and buys from whoever answers first. How many lists pass through three salespeople in your store because nobody knows the whole catalogue?
Book your demoNorth Home Center
online
Good morning! Bathroom and kitchen renovation, can you quote it all together?
Good morning! I can. Send the list right here — text, a photo of the paper or a file.
12 m2 porcelain tile 60x60 satin 4 matt acrylic white 5gal 10 elbow 90 25mm solvent weld 2 set switch + socket 20A 1 oval drop-in basin 6 interior tile adhesive 20kg
Got it. That is 6 items across four departments — I am checking them against the store's stock now.
Quote #HN04 is ready. 5 of the 6 items; I marked the oval drop-in basin as missing.
📄 quote-HN04.pdf
Can the paint be your own-brand one?
It can. Here is version 2 of #HN04 with our own brand; the previous one is now superseded.
📄 quote-HN04-v2.pdf
Illustrative conversation. Store, items and codes are examples.
Six lines and four departments of the store: tiling, paint, plumbing and electrical. Each with its own way of saying what the right item is.
Store WhatsApp
Good morning! Bathroom and kitchen renovation, here is everything together:
12 m2 porcelain tile 60x60 satin
4 matt acrylic white 5gal
10 elbow 90 25mm solvent weld
2 set switch + socket 20A
1 oval drop-in basin
6 interior tile adhesive 20kg
07:12
What Tablia read
5 of 6 items found. Whatever is missing goes to the salesperson with the customer's original wording — nothing disappears from the quote quietly.
Illustrative example. The list and the catalogue names are fictional.
Here the axis is not an attribute: it is breadth. Each line of the same list is decided by a criterion that does not apply to the line above it.
One salesperson masters two of those criteria, maybe three. The whole list needs all five at once — and that is why in a home center it usually passes through more than one person before it becomes a quote.
Nobody knows the whole catalogue
Tens of thousands of items and one salesperson per department. A list that crosses departments crosses people too.
Several right ones, one preferred
When three products meet the same request, the question stops being which one works and becomes which one to sell.
Own brand competes
It competes with the brand the customer wrote down — and when they wrote the brand, it is not a substitute.
Each line is read in full, with its quantity and its unit, regardless of which department it belongs to.
The search is not by department: it is by meaning, across all the stock you imported. An electrical item and a tiling item go down the same path.
Colour and brand eliminate in paint; amperage eliminates in electrical; bore eliminates in plumbing. The diverging candidate leaves the list instead of being offered.
When more than one product fits, the candidates arrive ordered by relevance, not in catalogue order.
The ranking is tuned by the preferences observed in your salespeople's earlier choices.
The list can arrive as
Handwriting is the only one that does not go in — returning a wrong quantity that looks right is worse than refusing the file.
What you upload
The stock file your store already uses, in CSV, XLS or XLSX, with the whole catalogue. Tablia recognises the code, description and price columns with the help of artificial intelligence, and you check the mapping before it takes effect. The bigger the catalogue, the more search by meaning pays off — it is where looking things up by hand costs the most.
What it does with what it could not find
The item appears to the salesperson flagged as not found, with the customer's original wording. In a broad catalogue that matters even more: without the flag, the item disappears into the middle of a long list. The decision is your team's: add it, propose an equivalent, adjust the quantity or say the store does not carry it.
Nothing is sent to the customer automatically. The salesperson reviews item by item, adjusts quantities, swaps products, sets the price and decides when to send.
In a home center the review is also where commercial policy comes in: which brand to push, when to offer the own brand, and where the store would rather not compete on price.
Tablia takes on
You decide
Yes, and it is the typical case in this trade. The search runs over the whole catalogue you imported, by meaning, without depending on the item being in the right department. A list with tiling, paint, plumbing and electrical goes down a single path.
The candidates reach the salesperson ordered by relevance, not in the order they sit in the catalogue. The ranking is also tuned by the preferences observed in your team's earlier choices, so what you tend to sell tends to rise.
Not on its own initiative. When the customer writes the brand, a product from another brand is discarded rather than suggested. Offering the own brand is the salesperson's commercial decision — as in the conversation at the top of this page, where the swap only happens after the customer authorises it.
No. You upload the stock file you already use, in CSV, XLS or XLSX, and Tablia recognises the code, description and price columns with the help of artificial intelligence. A large catalogue is where search by meaning pays off most, because it is where looking things up by hand costs the most.
It appears to the salesperson flagged as not found, with the customer's original wording beside it. On a long list that is what stops the item disappearing without anyone noticing. The decision is yours: add it, propose an equivalent, or say the store does not carry it.
PDF, a photo in JPG or PNG, a spreadsheet in XLSX or XLS, a document in DOCX, CSV or typed text. The only one that does not go in is a handwritten list: Tablia does not accept handwriting, so it never returns a wrong quantity that looks right.
Never. Nothing is sent without the salesperson. They review item by item, adjust quantities, swap products, set the price and decide when to send. Tablia takes on the typing and the searching; the decision stays with whoever knows the customer and the store's policy.
Vamos conversar
In the demo we use a list your store received this week, against your own catalogue. It is the fastest way to find out whether Tablia can handle the range you carry.
Book your demo