We built the shopper's side first. On purpose.

Herm started in 2025 in London as a consumer product — a private shopping profile people choose to connect. Everything on the brand side exists because that consent exists. That order isn't a backstory; it's the architecture.

Most companies in this space started by scraping what AI models say and selling the scoreboard. We started with the part that can't be scraped: shoppers, consent, receipts. The consumer app came first — the private profile, the "Connect with Herm" button, the verified receipt — because without a consented data layer, everything downstream is either guesswork or surveillance.

Then we built the brand side on top of it, as a ladder: be found, be sellable, be chosen, be proven. We coined AI Commerce Readiness to name the whole climb, because the existing words stopped at the first rung. The definition is public, the methodology is documented, and 1,992 brands are already on the scoreboard — most of them don't know it yet.

We're deliberately strict about claims. Every unshipped capability on this site wears a state chip; every number traces to something real; the one story we can't name is shown redacted. A category is only worth coining if you can afford to be honest inside it.