WHAT IS IT?

In short, Stylo is a low cost, self-drawing whiteboard intended to replace the poorly drawn chalkboards, 8.5x11 computer paper signs, and the tacky, energy intensive LCD displays used across the country by brick and mortar businesses to display messages, communicate with the public and attract customers.

Using dry erase markets and a loop of erasable plastic, Stylo coordinates the motion of the pen with the movement of the plastic surface to generate beautiful, precisely controlled artwork and designs better than any hand drawn display. Since it is erasable, there are no wasted materials, and because it uses almost no power while it isn’t drawing, it uses a fraction of the energy of traditional screens displays.

It has been deliberately designed to be ultra low cost, while not sacrificing on the quality of the drawings/messages, to provide an option for small businesses to increase their professionalism. Stylo promises to be the easiest and fastest way for small businesses to produce high fidelity signage on demand!

FEATURES

• Ultra low cost, self drawing display

• Easy and fast way to generate and display custom signage

• Multiple form factors to handle every scenario; windows to walls to freestanding

• Zero wasted materials

• 1/10th the energy of digital display setups

• Fun, unique, and dynamic display style that engages viewers more that typical mediums

And with $120 a year of energy saving*, investing $250 in a Stylo display for your store is a no brainer!

*compared to measurements taken from typical display and operating computer, using average California energy costs

We want to empower small businesses with low cost tools to produce higher quality, point-of-display signage with the press of a button, while reducing the waste and energy of current displays.

BUSINESS

In the last year, the print signage industry was valued at $45.7 billion dollars and digital signage is expected to grow to $32.1 billion dollars by 2026. These number represent industries built around two technologies, printed signage and LCD Digital Displays, that are misaligned with the needs of brick and mortar establishments, both small and large. Paper media is static and difficult to change messaging; in a world that moves at the speed of social media, advertising needs to be as responsive and dynamic as possible. LCD and other digital displays are energy intensive and expensive, particularly at large scale.

We believe that the Stylo product is dialed into what our customers need, not what they can make due with, and because of this, we are confident that that is a place for us in this very large market to carve off large portions of the digital display and print signage markets.

CUSTOMER SEGMENTS & VALUE PROPOSITION

CUSTOMER A [Short Term Target Customer]: Small Brick & Mortar Business Owners [Retail/Grocery]

These customers have their own small shops, maybe they have a small network of stores. The run promotions and have daily signage needs that they meet with handwritten signs or printed on printer paper. They use an easel outside to try to get customers to notice them when they are walking down the sidewalk. They have a nice hand-drawn chalkboard menu that was done by an artist and is out of date or poorly modified by an employee. They take a lot of pride in their store and are always looking for ways to improve their quality and professionalism. They are always looking for something to give them an edge but are quite cost sensitive.

Examples: Coffee shops, owner run restaurants, boutiques

Customer A Value Proposition: They need a faster way to generate more professional signage. Right now they either handwrite chalkboards or order custom signs from a vendor. Stylo provides them hi resolution signage at the point of display.

CUSTOMER B [Longer Term Target Customer]: Brick & Mortar Franchises with centrally located marketing teams

These customers are larger franchises and chain retailers that have a brand that is a little more eco-focused or maybe has a slight edge to them. There is significant geographic distance between each of their stores/branches and they have one centrally located headquarters. Their marketing team is centrally located and advertising campaigns typically require them to use an outside vendor to generate the assets they designed and then physically send them to each of the storefronts across the country.

Examples: Peets Coffee, Trade Joes, Whole Foods, Patagonia

Customer B Value Proposition: At best the process of distributing a promotional campaigns to every store across the country is currently an expensive, environmentally troubling, and slow process. Stylo gives the marketing team the ability to produce and distribute promotional campaigns to window displays across the country at speeds that rival social media.

Even more potential customers:

• Museums (Dynamic Infographics, Announcements)

• Apparel Store (Promotions, Sales, Decor)

• Movie Theatres (Movie Showtimes, Promotions)

• Convenience Stores (Promotions, Sales)

• Building Lobbies (Building Announcements, Schedules, Welcome Messages)

• Office Lobbies/Waiting Rooms/Receptions (Check IN Instructions, Welcome Messages)

• Nail Salons/Hair Dressers (Appointment Displays, Promotions)

REVENUE STREAMS

The revenue will be generated through three main avenues:

HARDWARE PURCHASE We believe that the hardware will fall below a $300 price point. We would like to focus on getting as many units into the market so that we can better develop services that utilize a higher number of users. The increased number of units will drive demand for more digital templates, a complementary revenue stream for Stylo.

DIGITAL TEMPLATE MARKETPLACE In order to better generate content for the devices, we will establish an in-app marketplace that will allow users to download and purchase templates for various applications that they can easily edit and use in their unique facility. This will provide both value to artists who will have a platform to generate income off of their digital assets and store owners who can quickly create higher quality signage for a low cost. Stylo will deduct a fee from each transaction facilitate through the storefront.

SERVICE PACKAGES The plan is to have 3-4 tiers of Service Packages to help maintain machines and keep them operational, ranging from no service package to a BASIC maintenance to a PREMIUM service that helps generate custom graphics to a PROFFESSIONAL grade service that will help with development of a network of connected devices and tools to manage them. The initial plan is to develop BASIC and PREMIUM support packages.

CHANNELS

The current strategy is to sell directly to small businesses online. The website and mobile application will house the retail for the hardware and support packages, but also have a marketplace for templates that the users can purchase to aid in the generation of content. These will be custom specials boards, menus, queues, etc, that the user will download into their Stylo app workspace and can quickly edit the text to fit their needs. This will generate both better designed assets for storeowners and an income generating opportunity for independent artists.

The Stylo device is inherently self advertising; storeowners will do the work of making sure it is prominently displayed to communicate their message, but inadvertently, also displaying the Stylo hardware. Every store using a Stylo is also a storefront advertising Stylo on our behalf. Outside of B&M advertising, the visual and dynamic nature of Stylo is a valuable asset when employing social media marketing and will be strong marketing channel for gaining visibility of this product.

KEY RESOURCES & ACTIVITIES

There are a couple key items that we will need to be juggling in order to produce viability across the business model.

1. Drive enough sales of the hardware in order to reduce the unit cost of the product to a reasonable price point for individual users. Our ability to amortize the cost of hardware tooling and PCB production low enough to produce an affordable product for small businesses is dependent on a high volume production.

2. Generate a marketplace and mobile application for connecting artist and content creators with small businesses. There are very few of our target customers that currently have the tools and skillsets to generate the type of content that will maximize the value of the Stylo display. That is why a portion of the mobile application will be dedicated to hosting a market place for people to sell and purchase design templates for various types of signage.

3. Provide sufficient support for a non-technical customer base to ensure that their display remain functioning and displaying fresh, dynamic messaging. This will be through the subscription support package that will use three different tiers to accommodate the needs and price points of the spectrum of users from individuals to large, multilocation businesses.

STRATEGY

FUNDING NEEDS

In order to move forward, we are looking for funding to commercialize the Stylo prototype into a fully functional product ecosystem. To do this, we are looking for funding to accomplish the follow:

1. Soft tooling costs for a large run of prototype parts - These parts will be used for building the first couple dozen units that can be installed into customer’s storefronts to harvest feedback from a larger group of users as we are designing and developing the mobile application.

2. Layout and fabricate custom PCBs - We need properly built, non-prototype circuit boards that integrate the hardware driving components with the wireless antenna so that the board can communicate with the Android application.

3. UX/Android Development Costs - We are in need of UX and Android Development expertise to build a production quality mobile application.

This funding will allow us to generate a small inventory of complete devices for a trial of the system while we develop the software side of the ecosystem and vet out the business viability. Placing devices into retailers will allow us to better understand what features are important to store owners, what value they would place on the device, how much support they might need to keep the devices running and how they will ultimately use them.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about Stylo!

If you have any thoughts or feedback, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to contact me directly or use the form below!