Innovator aims to link smart phone and tag

By Jennifer Campbell – Telegraph Journal | link to original article

You're standing in a big-box retail store, staring at a shelf-load of laptops, bewildered by the choice and not feeling you're getting much help from the staff, who seem only to be reading the product information that's in front of you.

If Yan Simard had anything to do with it, this process will be a little less bewildering in the future, just with the addition of a small electronic tag. The product packaging would be equipped with an RFID (radio-frequency identification) – a fancy way to describe a sticker embedded with an electronic circuit – tag that would take you directly to consumer-friendly information about the product. The information would come straight from the manufacturer so it would be reliable, Simard said.

“The tag is pretty dumb,” said the entrepreneur, who is the owner and founder of AirMe, a finalist in the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation's Breakthru business competition. “It has no information in it other than linking you to a web page. It's just a device that takes you to the really useful information.”

From a business-development perspective, he plans to partner with marketing firms, rather than the actual product companies.

“If I were to trying partnering with Sony, it would take maybe two years before I get the chance to talk to someone who can make a decision quickly,” Simard said. “So the idea is to partner with key marketing firms that actually do the marketing for these big accounts so that when they put together the strategy, they include our component.”

Simard has already begun to roll out this plan, although inadvertently. When he was completing his business analysis, he contacted several Fredericton marketing firms to talk to them about how feasible his idea was. One of them – Orange Sprocket – liked it so much, they invested in the company. Now Bill McGrath and Jeff Curry are both shareholders in the company, which was incorporated in June 2009.

“They have some New Brunswick clients,” Simard said “but they work on national and international accounts for larger companies so they can get us an entry into these big accounts.”

But that's down the road. For now, they have one paying client, Fredericton's Picaroon's Traditional Ale, and they'll use that contract to test the market and the function of their product.

“We're also talking to some very big New Brunswick names,” Simard said. “If I can demonstrate to a New York (marketing firm) client that I have some big brands, that gives me credibility.

“We're getting lots of good feedback and visibility even though we haven't launched so I think that's a good sign the market is ready for this kind of product.”

In addition to giving products a value add-on in terms of information, which is easily accessible, Simard's company is also building a powerful interface so it can track information for the clients. For example, it can track what information was most often requested by would-be customers.

“It's not personalized but I can say, for example, that 16 people wanted to know Information X. And if they sign in using their Facebook profile, we could even give the social demographic profile of users. We'll be giving companies information that might otherwise not be available.”

At this point, most smart phones don't have the ability to read RFID tags but that's coming, Simard insists. It will come, he said, on the heels of technology that allows you to pay for your groceries in pay-pass style, using your cellphone, which will then bill your credit card.

“That's near-field communication and this technology also allows for reading of RFID tags,” Simard said, and noted that Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry, are heading that way as are many Android and Samsung phones. And, he predicts the iPhone5 will also have that capability.

They decided to go with RFID instead of using the already accessible QR codes because the latter require an extra step – that of taking a photo with the phone.

“We want the info to be there with one single action,” Simard explained.

Simard, who has an MBA in information technology management, has been working in IT for 15 years.

He currently has a day job but expects to eventually – likely within a matter of months – start working full-time for AirMe. Currently, the company has one employee, a computer science student from UNB who is working “on the back end” of the system.

Sixth in a series about innovators to be honoured at the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation Breakthru gala on March 16 in Fredericton. Tickets for the are dinner available at www.nbif.ca.