January 25, 2013

Customer discovery

Our customer segments: retailers, product vendors, advertising agencies and the shopper. We expect the list to narrow down as the customer discovery progresses. Advertising agencies is an interesting addition to our list of customer segments. It was suggested to us by Brad Wheeler of UILO. It appears that product vendors hire ad agencies to determine their ad strategy – i.e. which mediums to use and how much. Something to explore.

After our meeting, I set out to meet our potential customers.

1. Dan, Store manager, SuperStore Richmond – response was positive

Armed with a mini-whiteboard, I stepped into SuperStore Richmond to meet the store manager. Fortunately, the store manager was available for a brief discussion. I explained our product quickly within a minute or two. He was interested in the product and thought that such a system would be quite useful, if deployed in his store.  He also seemed interested in using the application as a shopper. I managed to get the contacts of the District Manager for Loblaws, who appears to be a decision maker.

2. Jason, Memory Express – very positive

Memory Express is a small electronics chain – they have 10 stores, half of which are in Alberta. This is a relatively small company and the key decision makers are apparently two individuals.

I spoke to Jason, the store manager who was enthusiastic about both the navigation and product advertising aspects of the application. We discussed the product for about half-an-hour. He enquired about the cost of deploying the service, when I asked him if he would recommend deploying our solution. He has promised to discuss the matter with the decision makers.

From the end-user perspective, he said he would use the application. Jason also suggested contacting Fry’s, a large electronics retailer in the U.S.

3. Later in the afternoon, I met John and Vahag, two salesmen at Futureshop. John would not comment on ZipThru due to company policy. Vahag seemed interested and said that he would use the application, if it was free. However, both the individuals are not decision makers. We will have to contact the Futureshop head office in Burnaby. That is going to be high on our list.