Maple Scan是一款由Sasha Ivanov开发的应用程序，旨在帮助加拿大人更清晰地了解他们购买的商品，并发现本土替代品。该应用通过AI图像识别技术，扫描商品条形码或图片，提供关于商品成分、产地、所有权以及生产地等详细信息，而非简单判断是否为加拿大制造。用户可以基于这些信息自主做出购买决策。自三月推出以来，Maple Scan已获得超过11万次下载，并积累了庞大的用户社区。该应用不仅关注商品来源，还致力于帮助用户在坚持价值观的同时节省开支，并推出了超本地化推荐等功能，鼓励消费者支持本地企业。

🇨🇦 **赋能消费者，洞悉商品细节**：Maple Scan通过AI技术扫描商品，不直接判定“加拿大制造”，而是提供包括成分、所有权、生产地以及就业人数等多维度信息，让消费者能全面了解商品，自主做出更明智的购买选择，理解“加拿大制造”和“加拿大产品”的区别。

🤝 **社群驱动，共建本土经济**：该应用吸引了大量志愿者的支持，涵盖市场营销、食品法规、工程等多个领域，共同推动Maple Scan的成长。用户通过应用不仅能发现本土产品，还能形成一种有意识的消费习惯，支持加拿大经济发展。

💡 **创新功能，优化消费体验**：Maple Scan不断迭代更新，新增了如“超本地化推荐”功能，鼓励用户发现并购买本地城市内的产品。同时，应用内嵌的趣味提示语也增加了用户的使用乐趣，提升了整体的用户体验。

🌍 **超越国界，满足全球需求**：虽然Maple Scan最初专注于加拿大市场，但其帮助用户了解商品来源和所有权的核心功能，也吸引了墨西哥和欧洲部分地区用户的关注，显示出全球消费者对透明化购买信息的普遍需求。

Sasha Ivanov made an app to help Canadians understand their purchases and find local alternatives.Ivanov says the app has gained significant traction, with at least 110,000 downloads.Some told Ivanov they would stick with Canadian products regardless of whether US tariffs vanish.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sasha Ivanov, founder of Maple Scan. Ivanov, based in Alberta, Canada, has a master's degree in computer science and is an app developer who studies human-technology interactions.

It all came from a really personal moment.

Back in February, I was at home watching the news when I saw Trump's announcement about tariffs being imposed on Canadian goods — and I felt attacked.

I remember thinking, "I'm going to try to start buying Canadian, to support the economy here and the country," but I quickly realized how hard it is to really know what you're buying.

I was going through my pantry, grabbing my ketchup, and trying to look up if it was Canadian or not. I had to look through all its ingredients, then I had to search online for a substitute. It was slow, annoying, and just not scalable.

With my background in app development and human-computer interaction research, I quickly decided to build an app that could help solve this conundrum.

That weekend, I spent a few days building the first prototype. And a week later, I launched Maple Scan.

Maple Scan focuses on informed decisions

When people first hear about the app, they think it will just tell them whether something is Canadian or not and recommend an alternative. But our approach is different because that question is nuanced.

Once you download the free app, you can take a photo of any product with the in-app camera. The AI-powered image recognition in the app will then read the label and search for information online and in our database, but it won't make a final judgment on whether a product is Canadian.

Instead, it will tell you about the ingredients, ownership, where it's manufactured, and how many people are employed there. The app surfaces all those different pieces of information so you can make a decision on your own. We don't want to make that judgment for you — we just want people to be informed.

For example, the app can distinguish between "Made in Canada" and "Product of Canada," which are two different things based on how many of the ingredients come from here. It also includes ownership information, like whether it's a Canadian-owned brand or a subsidiary of a foreign company. It's about giving context, not just a label.

Building a community around conscious purchasing

Honestly, one of my favorite parts of this whole journey has been the community that's grown around it.

Maple Scan started as a solo project, but the support that came in almost immediately was beautiful.

University colleagues, people across Canada, and even total strangers reached out and said they wanted to help with this project.

Now, we have a group of volunteers with expertise in everything from social media marketing to food industry regulations, as well as mentorship, engineering support, and networking help.

All the support has been absolutely crucial to the app's growth. For example, people in the food industry have helped explain how long it takes for packaging to reflect a product's sourcing, sometimes months. So, when a company might not have a "Made in Canada" label yet but actually does source from Canada, Maple Scan can help bridge that gap and surface that information sooner.

We've had over 110,000 downloads in just a few months, and there've been over 550,000 individual scans to date. When it first launched, it made it to number 6 on the Canadian App Store. And with the recent announcements of more tariffs potentially coming, it's trending again.

Maple Scan is constantly adding new features

When we launched, we also saw Maple Scan downloads in Mexico in parts of Europe. It turns out that people around the world want to understand who owns the products they buy and where they're made.

Though our focus remains on Canada for now, we're working on new features. One of our goals is to help people buy things in line with their values and save money while doing it. We know it's a privilege to shop based on principle, and local products can cost more. So we want to help people make those choices without it costing them extra.

We are constantly evolving. One of the coolest things we added later on was hyper-local recommendations. So if there's a soda company in your own city, it might say, "Hey, look, there's this soda company here. Just get that."

Another feature we added is fun messages that pop up while the app scans products, like "Checking if it can survive a Canadian winter" or "Scanning for hidden maple syrup." Many people have told me that's their favorite part of the app.

The tariffs are definitely a wake-up call for Canada that we can't be overly dependent on one trading partner. But it sends a powerful message when we see people try new products and form new economic relationships. People tell me they have found such great Canadian alternatives that they're happy to stick with them. Once those habits shift, they can be hard to undo even if tariffs go away.