At a glance:
The Problem
In shopping, consumers are looking for what they have been missing due to the limitations of the shopping channel they may be using at the moment. More specifically they expect:
- Independence, rich information, personalized offers, self-checkout, mobile payment, and queueless exit in the physical store (scan-pay-go).
- Guidance, confidence, and speed for making the right choice in remote shopping (e.g. in the e-shop).
Retailers have been unable to offer a unified shopping experience to consumers, both in-store and remotely, both self-service and with salespeople assistance.
The Solution
Valuelenz is the most comprehensive hybrid commerce solution, empowering a flexible and easy-to-use phygital shopping, overcoming the limitations of each shopping channel. How to shop depends on the consumer’s mood. Valuelenz enables consumers to enjoy a convenient, personalized and fun shopping experience, both in-store and remotely, both self-service and with assistance. Valuelenz works on a mobile, but does not require a mobile app download. It also supports 26 languages, including Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Arabic, etc.
Why is this important?
Valuelenz offers consumers shopping freedom with no limits, like no other phygital shopping platform. And the retailer enjoys increased sales and customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Equally importantly, Valuelenz is readily available not only for big retailers, but also for SMEs alike. Valuelenz does not require any investment in software or hardware, and can be up and running very quickly with big company features at very affordable subscription cost.
Founder Blitz
In order to learn even more intriguing insights, our team met with Valuelenz’s founders for a quick “founder blitz”.
1. What inspired you to start Valuelenz?
We realized that shopping has been traditionally (and still is) limited, both in-store and digitally, with different barriers depending on the shopping channel/venue. We decided to bring together the best features from all shopping channels/venues, to provide a unified shopping experience for shopping freedom, convenience, confidence, and fun, with no limits.
We purpose-built Valuelenz to make it the most comprehensive hybrid commerce platform, offering a phygital shopping experience both in-store and remotely, both self-service and with assistance. This is what we call ‘omni-context’ (the new omnichannel), allowing the retailer to start from one use case (‘context’) and expand as needed.
3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established Valuelenz?
The biggest challenge that we are still facing is to convince retailers of any size that the dilemma whether shopping should be physical or digital is a false one. Shopping can be both physical and digital. But seamlessly merged and not separated in silos. Retailers are gradually accepting that new reality, until it eventually becomes the new normal. No retailer will be able to afford offering anything less, because they will seem outdated to their customers.
2. What is your next big milestone?
Valuelenz has already been successfully implemented with several large retailers in various sectors, namely fashion, cosmetics, consumer electronics, and supermarkets. Those implementations of Valuelenz were fully customized to the specific requirements of each retailer.
Our next big milestone is to package Valuelenz appropriately, so that it can be offered with predetermined feature sets, to facilitate a quick and cost-effective deployment for SMEs. Our vision is to democratize hybrid commerce and phygital shopping even for smaller retailers.
The Valuelenz cloud architecture, the SaaS business model, and the localization of 26 languages, enable an unlimited scalability for global expansion.
4. What does success look like for Valuelenz?
Success for Valuelenz will be to materialize its vision and make phygital shopping the new normal across the world for retailers of any size.
At a glance:
The Problem
Businesses such as hotels or retail shops that have invested in electric vehicle charging stations are not maximizing the return on their investment. We provide an interoperable application to these businesses to help them efficiently manage charging stations, earn revenue and attract the rapidly growing market segment of electric vehicle owners.
The Solution
Business, like hotels, can list their electric vehicle charging stations in EV Loader app in order to increase the frequency of charges at their stations, offer a streamlined payment system for drivers and keep track of the transactions that occur at their charging station, through a web and a mobile app.
Drivers can download the app to find charging stations in Greece and Cyprus and transact with ease when they need to charge their electric vehicle.
Why is this important?
The main pain point for drivers of electric vehicles is charging away from home. The process of finding charging stations and paying for charging sessions in locations such as hotels is not optimal and this still discourages many drivers from switching to an EV. Streamlining this process unlocks value for drivers and business owners.
Founder Blitz
Meet EV Loaders’ team and learn more about their vision and the next milestones for the company in our “founder blitz”.
1. What inspired you to start EV Loader?
We started EV Loader, because we as owners of electric vehicles we struggled to find hotels that had EV Charging Stations during our trips. And even when we managed to locate charging stations, the process to initiate a session was not streamlined at all. We had to ask at the hotel reception for a key, in order to start and then repeat the process to stop the session. We thought that it would be much easier if we could pay via our mobile phone and initiate charging session via a mobile app.
3. What is the biggest challenge you have come against since you established EV Loader?
When we initially launched the app in the first charging stations, we had really demanding workload. We were developing new features for the app, while at the same time providing live support for the first drivers/users with a very small team. Luckily, we were soon able to expand the team with additional members that are handling real time support through a more streamlined process now.
2. What is your next big milestone?
Recently we entered the Cypriot market via a partnership with two local companies involved in EV charging installations. The next milestone is to initiate similar partnerships in more countries in Southeastern Europe to increase the number of stations that are managed by EV Loader.
4. What does success look like for EV Loader?
We want EV Loader to become the EV charging station management application of preference for hotels and retail locations in SE Europe.