Market it “better” than what? What have you tried so far and how well has it worked?

They make a cure for laziness called Adderall

I don’t see the appeal on the consumer side of things. “I went to the store and they didn’t have the specific thing that I wanted” is not really a common problem IMO, because most “I already know what I want” shopping has moved online.

Most in-person shopping these days (among people who use apps) is situations where people don’t know exactly what they want, so they go somewhere to browse and physically try on clothes, for example. An app like this isn’t really helpful for something like that, because all the app would answer is “does this place have a good variety of the things that I want to look at?”, which usually you can already guess just by knowing what store you’re going to (I’ve never gone shopping for boots and then somehow ended up at a store that only sells 1 kind of boot).

The way I see it, this product would basically be testing “if people who were otherwise going to make an online order knew they could pick that item up locally, would they pick it up instead?”, and I don’t think the answer to that is yes most of the time

is it normal for everyone to try to screw you over?

There are plenty of honest people, but it’s pretty common for people to try to screw you over

Should I require every single client to sign a contract?

Yes

For a dispute that large, you should get a consultation with a lawyer.

I had a physical product mass produced by finding companies on Alibaba that sold similar products in bulk and emailing them about ordering my own design.

One drawback of this approach is that the sort of companies that are on Alibaba will rip off your design if it seems like it’s doing well.

A business with no revenue, and no assets to use as collateral, can only get a loan if it’s personally guaranteed by the owners.

If you’re a software startup, it is a good idea to compete with your competitors on price, because the marginal cost of selling software is near zero.

But there are diminishing returns on cheaper pricing.

Like, let’s say you doubled your prices, so you cost 66% of your competitors’ price instead of the 33% now. 66% still leaves you significantly cheaper than your competitors. Who is going to pick your product at 33% price but not 66% price? Are there people out there who will be like “I will buy OP’s product at $33, but if OP’s product costs $66, I’d rather buy OP’s competitor’s product for $100 instead”?

(That’s not a rhetorical question - if your competitors have a better product, or if they have more brand recognition than you, then maybe 33% price will get you a lot more customers than 66% price. But if you’re on relatively even footing with your competitors in terms of brand and features, then you’ll probably lose very few sales if you bump up from 33% to 66%)