How to Use AI Agents to Build a Competitive Intelligence Dashboard—No Coding Required
AI is reshaping the mattress industry, and leaders who adopt early will unlock new insights and value. Here’s how one exec built a powerful competitor tracker with zero coding experience.
From Friction to Vision: Using AI to Solve Real Business Problems
In this episode of The FAM Podcast, host Mark Kinsley takes listeners behind the scenes of a personal AI experiment that transformed from a curiosity into a powerful business tool. Using the AI agent Manus.ai, Kinsley—who describes himself as “non-technical”—built a functioning competitive intelligence dashboard and stock tracker that pulls real-time data from mattress retailers’ websites, analyzes promotional trends, and identifies strategic threats and opportunities.
The takeaway? You don’t need to code to build AI-powered business tools. You just need a clear vision and good prompting.
Why Competitive Intelligence Matters in Bedding Retail
Understanding your local market is more critical than ever. Kinsley fed Manus a prompt to map out competitors within a 50-mile radius of Bentonville, Arkansas (ZIP 72712), and asked it to:
- Identify competitors with physical locations
- Scrape their websites for promotions
- Pull product data where possible
- Verify discount claims with links to source pages
The result was a working dashboard that included metrics like top competitors, discount levels, promotion end dates, and even whether a retailer was mattress-only or sold furniture too.
One notable finding? Mattress Firm was running a 72% discount on Serta Perfect Sleepers, signaling an aggressive clearance effort. That surfaced as a high-priority strategic threat.
Bonus Feature: Real-Time Stock Tracker
Kinsley didn’t stop with market intelligence. Using the same AI agent, he built a lightweight dashboard to monitor public stock performance of mattress companies like Somnigroup International (Tempur-Sealy), Purple, Sleep Number, and Leggett & Platt.
The stock tracker shows which companies are trending up or down, auto-refreshes the latest numbers, and even exports images for newsletters. Kinsley noted that Somnigroup now commands a $14 billion market cap—over half the estimated $25 billion mattress market—a metric that should catch the industry’s attention.
Prompts, Patience, and Practical Lessons
What did it take to build all this?
Patience, iteration, and clear communication. Kinsley emphasizes the importance of breaking tasks into small steps, feeding AI clear instructions, and acting like a “good boss”—one who doesn’t firehose vague demands but offers context, priorities, and a clear goal.
He also encouraged using AI to improve your own prompting: “Once you build something, ask the system how you could’ve gotten there faster. It will teach you how to talk to it better.”
Live Data vs. Hallucinations: Staying Grounded
Kinsley also cautioned users to validate outputs. While Manus created beautiful dashboards, some sections used placeholder data. By pointing this out and uploading a screenshot with a voice prompt via Whisper Flow, Kinsley got the system to fix the issue and enable 15-minute data refresh intervals.
The lesson: AI wants to please you—but it’s your job to inspect and direct.
Culture and Leadership: The Future of AI in the Mattress Industry
In the final section, Kinsley issues a call to arms for mattress executives: “AI adoption has to come from the top. Otherwise, it’ll be used behind your back—and you won’t even know it.”
He urges leaders to empower teams, create a culture of learning, and start experimenting. AI is removing barriers. You no longer need IT approval to innovate. You need vision and initiative.
And the industry’s early adopters—like the executive teams at King Koil, Blue Bell, and Sit ‘n Sleep—are already leaning in.
Final Thought: The Most Capable Assistant on the Planet
“If you’re a creator, a builder, or an operator, AI is your assistant. It knows everything. It doesn’t judge. And it just wants to help.”
Kinsley’s message is clear: AI isn’t a distant trend. It’s a here-and-now advantage for those willing to learn, prompt, and build—even without code.
