Shopping savvy in an app

By Stephen Llwellyn – Daily Gleaner | link to original article

Wouldn't it be convenient if you could just wave your smart phone over a product on a store shelf and instantly be able to find out everything about it, including reviews by other people who bought it

You could even post your own review online.

Well, all you need for that to happen is a next generation smart phone with near field communication (NFC) and for Yan Simard's Fredericton-based startup company called airMe to be a success in making every day objections more intelligent.

“Maybe a year or so ago I was playing with the idea that the Internet was putting people in a virtual world,” Simard said in a recent interview.

“For me it just did not feel right … I thought that technology and IT should … allow us to have a richer experience with the physical world around us.”

He did some research on the subject and came up with the idea for airMe.

Simard talked to some potential investors and clients, set up his company in June and recruited some experts from University of New Brunswick to work on the technology.

He now has a demo that shows how a radio frequency identification tag works with a bottle of wine, a next-generation smart phone and mockup of a web page.

“I thought there might be a way to use the Internet and mobile technology to have more information about the objects that we are using on a day-to-day basis,” said Simard, who is 36 and grew up near Quebec City but has been living in Fredericton for the last 18 months.

His business model involves a distributor or retailer creating a product profile.

“We are charging for each product profile created,” he said.

“We also charge for the tags themselves. We charge also for each time a consumer passes a phone in front of a product … For the consumer it doesn't cost anything.”

An NFC smart phone will also allow people to pay for things with their phones and credit cards.

“This technology is going to be used on all major smart phones going forward in 2011,” said Simard.

He said it will also be on all new Blackberrys as well devices from other manufacturers such as Apple.

“So all these phones will have the capability to just be passed in front of a tag and retrieve information,” he said.

For older phones, you will have to type in a code to get that information.

One of Simard's investors is Fredericton-based Orange Sprocket, and it's also providing him with marketing material, business development support and office space.

Simard said many different companies are working on the same general idea using different technologies or different business models.

For example, Microsoft makes a product that lets you take a picture of a tag with your phone to retrieve a web page with information, he said.

The downside of that system is content pollution.

“I could decide tomorrow as an individual to go on Microsoft Tag, print a number of tags and put it anywhere I want to link it to whatever web page I see fit,” said Simard.

“Our model is superior in the sense that the information that is going to be provided is going to be created by the companies that know about their products … The user experience is going to be tremendously better using our swipe technology where people just have to pass their phone in front of the tag.”

He said he hopes to have a commercial launch in the spring.

Simard is also a finalist in the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation's Breakthru competition, which will pick a winner from six finalists later this month.

“If we land a big prize, it is going to allow us to move a bit faster,” he said.

“What I am hoping is we can have one or two large volume customers by the end of the year.”

Simard said becoming a Breakthru finalist was an exciting moment.

“There are many good companies in New Brunswick that have many good ideas,” he said.