Chapters

Summary

Chris’s journey with Cellr started from learning at the Founder Institute. Initially aiming for an inventory management system for hospitality, Chris and his crew went through many challenges to complete this system.

He first showed an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Tag). They used these tags during the initial stage of Cellr. The problem was its bulkiness, so they explored all kinds of technology and eventually pivoted to NFC technology.

Chris explained how the small size of tags for NFC works better than RFID. The design of the tags is customisable, so it can also be a marketing/branding material. Since NFC is implemented in smartphones, customers can access product information freely.

Cellr was further developed to provide geographical locations and statistics from the tags. Customers can access product content in their language. Wine sellers can get the infographics of their customers too. The only difficulty with these is that they are not efficient for stocktaking.

Jesse then asked Chris how Cellr is currently running. Chris shared how their main customers are wine sellers overseas. America and Europe were already familiar with NFC. According to him, Australia is still catching up.

They then tried out the technology. Jesse counted the tags by hand while Chris used the scanner. Jesse took about 8 seconds to count 37 tags. Chris only took a quarter to do the same thing! Chris showed us another feature. You can easily find a product by having the scanner search for its tag. Jesse was astonished at how quickly it could find the tag.

Chris gave another example of how useful NFC can be. Let’s say you had a gateway that has a scanner implemented onto it. You bring through a pallet with products that have tags. Once the pallet goes through the scanner, it can immediately identify and count the products. If you integrate it with your inventory system, it can automatically record the stock. How convenient!

Next, Jesse asked whether Cellr is scalable for other types of businesses. Chris answered yes. As it is originally a digital product, it was made in mind to be flexible, scalable and ready for a different landscape. His wish is for businesses to think of Cellr as the company that helped them grow.

Jesse then talked about how NFC could revolutionise content distribution. People could link the NFC tag to their website. Each tag could be customised and provide authentic content on the specific product. Jesse also added the powerful potential of NFC tags as brand identifiers. Chris agreed and added that modern consumers are chasing after such content. He said that they are creating today’s platform for authentic content distribution. Accessible by everyone’s beloved smartphones.

This episode ended with Chris’s call to action. He said it is about engaging with your customer. Make sure you know your ideal customer profile (ICP) to provide the type of engagement they want.