Edmonton entrepreneurs Matthew Suddaby and Will Boytinck have developed an app called Shop Canadian to help consumers easily identify Canadian-made products. With the looming threat of tariffs from the U.S., many Canadians are looking for ways to support the local economy.

As Canada and the US reached a 30-day truce before the tariffs took effect, a growing movement emerged to prioritize Canadian-made goods over American imports. Sensing the opportunity, the long-time friends and software developers quickly built the app after feeling the patriotic push to support local businesses.

The Shop Canadian app is a simple and fast way to obtain product information by scanning barcodes. The app pulls information from a database of company registrations for product codes, automatically revealing whether the company is registered in Canada, the U.S., or elsewhere.

Within the first 24 hours of the app launch, the founders received hundreds of messages and suggestions showcasing support, which exceeded their expectations. The two developers are working further to make the app simpler and faster and creating a mechanism to reveal if the products are being imported by a Canadian company and packaged in Canada. Over 1,000 people have already started using the app, while more and more Canadians are downloading the app.

Source: CBC