Crew 05: live, product selection and sourcing intelligence
Six analysts brief the buy. The buyer reads, signs and orders.
What to stock, where it sells, which price band has room left, when the seasonal spike lands, who already owns the listing and what their reviews complain about. The Selection Crew is six narrow research analysts who produce the briefs a sourcing or category buyer needs before a PO goes out, for any market the buyer asks about, in English and 简体中文 end to end.
We put the roles of a category-research team into one agent crew, and only the buyer signs. This is one of six sample crews we run today, and we'll build the seventh for whatever takes your sourcing team a week each month by hand.
The shape
A queue of briefs, six analysts and a buyer.
Brief queue
The buyer asks a question, such as "should we list bluetooth speakers in Indonesia?" or "how does business backpack demand swing in Malaysia?", and the right analyst picks it up. Jobs run asynchronously and the console refreshes itself.
Six analysts
Market intelligence, trend forecast, competitor radar, keyword research, arbitrage scout and sentiment analyst. Each has one narrow brief, and none tries to be a strategist.
Human buyer
Reads the brief, downloads the .docx and signs the buy. The crew does the legwork, and the human owns the procurement decision and the inventory risk that follows.
The agent crew
Six narrow analysts and one human buyer.
market.analyst
Market intelligence
Takes a target market and product. Returns competitive market share, entry, mid and premium pricing bands, the online and offline channel split, and an executive summary, in a dated, downloadable brief you can copy from.
trend.analyst
Trend forecast
Takes a target market, category and forecast horizon. Returns a stable, rising or cooling verdict, price bands by tier, and seasonal demand multipliers tied to the local calendar: 6.6 and 7.7 mid-year, Merdeka Day and school-holiday windows. Multipliers are numbers, such as 3×, 4× and 4.5×.
competitor.radar
Competitor radar
Takes named competitors and a named monitoring focus. Tracks listing velocity, price moves, assortment changes and claim shifts on the brands the buyer wrote down.
keyword.research
Keyword research
Works in the destination market's own language. Finds the search terms buyers type, with intent (browse, buy or compare) and seasonal lift, so listing copy matches the search.
arbitrage.scout
Arbitrage scout
Takes a base market and unit cost. Returns one or many target markets with the realistic landed-price spread, the tier the unit lands in, and the margin band after shipping, duty and platform fees. The buyer can defend it in a P&L review.
sentiment.analyst
Sentiment analyst
Mines reviews on the competitor brands the buyer named and finds the recurring praise and complaints, so the next supplier conversation already covers what to ask the factory to fix.
Category buyer (human)
Reads, signs and orders
A human downloads, reads and signs off the brief before procurement moves. The crew doesn't raise POs, sign MOQs or commit working capital.
What it ships
Each brief is dated, sourced and downloadable, in the buyer's language.
Market intelligence brief
Competitive share, pricing bands and sales-channel split, plus an executive summary that names the structural drivers. Cited back to listings and channels.
Trend forecast brief
Price bands by tier with currency-anchored ranges, seasonal demand multipliers tied to local dates, and competitive market-share split. The forecast horizon is stated on the brief.
Arbitrage and sourcing brief
Base-market unit cost mapped into the target-market price spread, with the margin band left after fees, showing where the real sourcing advantage is.
From brief to buy
How a buyer turns the briefs into a buy.
Pick what to stock
The market brief shows the online and offline split, pricing-band depth and which tiers are saturated, so the buyer can find the tier with room left.
Time the buy
Trend forecasts tie to local seasonal dates: 6.6 and 7.7 mid-year, Merdeka Day and June school holidays. The multiplier is a number on the brief, so order quantity and timing both have a defensible figure.
Set the price
The arbitrage scout maps a base-market unit cost into the target-market spread and shows where the margin band sits after fees. The buyer prices into that band.
Win the listing
Keyword research finds the words buyers in the destination market use, in their own language, so the listing copy matches the search.
Read the reviews
The sentiment analyst pulls reviews on the named competitors and finds the recurring complaints. The next supplier brief tells the factory which complaint your unit should fix.
What we won't ship
Five things the crew won't do.
No fabricated market shares or price bands
Every chart links back to the listings, channels and signals behind it. If a source goes stale, the number is flagged on the next refresh.
No supplier roster posing as an agent
The crew briefs the buy. Supplier conversations, MOQs, sample policy and contract terms are the human buyer's job, because those relationships have to be earned.
No "trending" without a horizon
Every forecast names its horizon and the seasonal dates it weights. "It's hot right now" isn't a brief.
No competitor radar without named competitors
The agent works from brands the buyer wrote down, with a stated monitoring focus. We won't guess at a category landscape.
No buy decision without the buyer signing
Every brief is downloaded, read and signed off before procurement moves. The crew supplies intelligence and the human commits inventory.
A reusable pattern
Cut your bad bets and keep your category coverage.
This is one of six sample crews we run today. The other five run weekly BD pipelines, draft and fact-check articles, operate biological water treatment, produce listing-ready ecommerce imagery, and reconcile finance ops. The shape is the same each time: narrow agents, a curated source registry, an eval harness, and a human who signs. We'll build the seventh for whatever your sourcing team is still doing by hand.
Brief us