Camelback High School team wins Innovative App Challenge

Four Camelback High School students earned top honors for developing an idea for a shopping app. They won several thousand dollars for their school club in a national contest. Now they're hoping you can help make their idea for an app a reality.

The marketing students came up with an app to make grocery shopping easier.

"We developed an indoor GPS app for grocery stores.. the technology already exists, so we just had to incorporate that into an app," said Sila Frayre.

Frayre and her three classmates won the prize for Best App in Arizona in the high school division of the Verizon Innovative App Challenge.

They came up with the idea when they realized how often folks online complain about grocery shopping.

"Even as students, when our parents tell us to go grocery shopping, we don't know where products are and we get lost," said Frayre. "It takes them 40 minutes to even find the products in the store."

Here's how their shopping app would work:

"Once you enter your grocery list, it recommends different stores according to the coupons and sales," explained Frayre.

Once inside a store, the app uses GPS to help you find your groceries.

"And it guides you through the aisles to find every product on your grocery list," said Frayre.

50 winners were selected in the Verizon contest out of 1,200 entries.

The four girls won new tablets and $5,000 for their marketing and entrepreneurship club at Camelback High School.

"Our app won best in state, so now we have to compete to actually develop the idea," said Frayre.

And if they win Best in Nation, they could wind up teaming up with M.I.T. to build the app.

The students are asking people to text SHOPEASY2 to 22333 to vote for their app in hopes of winning the national prize.

For more information on the contest, go to http://appchallenge.tsaweb.org/vote/5764.

Shop Easy App commercial: https://youtu.be/0s-ZQAJiksU