Startup Q&A: Ionut Vlad, Founder, Tokinomo
RTIH: Tell us about Tokinomo
IV: Oh, where should I begin? Tokinomo started out when we had the absolutely crazy idea that we could come up with an in-store advertising tool better than the ones available at that moment.
Why absolutely crazy? Because we had no technical skills whatsoever, hence no sane person alive would have given us a chance to invent a complex robot, a mobile app and cloud-based software for campaign management with analytics and everything. Life’s funny, right?
To put it simply, Tokinomo is a retail tech solution that uses sound, motion and light to bring products to life at the shelf and increase shopper engagement. But in fact it’s much more than that: it’s a way of creating an emotional bond with the customers and turning your product into a storyteller at the Point of Sale. That’s the true magic of it.
RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?
IV: At that moment I was working as an art director for the largest travel retailer in Romania and, after some classic in-store campaigns we did for one of our brands, I realised that conventional in-store advertising is not only inefficient but it’s also lacking imagination and creativity.
The first condition for any shopper to buy a product is to see it. But if you create a memorable experience for them, if you make them laugh or connect in some way with your product, then the chances of them buying your product increase exponentially.
We also saw that most of the promotional materials available were cardboards, wobblers, TV screens, electronic displays, radios. The big innovations were VR and AR. All of them were promoting an image of the product, not the product itself.
So we had the idea of letting the product be the actual star. We wanted to remove any additional layer and let the product do the talking…literally. We call this RR – Real Reality.
RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?
IV: We don’t mean to brag, but the truth is that the reaction has been amazing from the very beginning. At first, we tested our solution inside stores and saw fabulous results in sales. Our average increase in sales is 200% and our top campaign reached up to 944%.
The brands and retailers were very happy about it. Then, we wanted to see the reactions of the customers, so we did some study cases. Most of the people laugh, interact with the product, they record it, they answer back or ask questions. Kids love it, as you would imagine.
RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?
IV: Well, besides the financial challenges, which we managed to overcome after we proved the efficiency of the solution we invented, the greatest challenge was to get decision-makers to be early adopters of our solution.
As weird as it sounds, being so innovative is our greatest asset, but also our biggest drawback. People are afraid to try new things, to change what they are already doing, to take risks.
Also, the constant increase in sales that Tokinomo is generating in-store sounds like a scam for potential clients, because there is no other tool that has these results. That’s why, even if we have sales results like +400% , +800%, our sales team some times doesn’t even mention them, because clients might get suspicious. It’s too good to be true. But it is.
“As weird as it sounds, being so innovative is our greatest asset, but also our biggest drawback. People are afraid to try new things, to change what they are already doing, to take risks”
RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the omnichannel retail sector right now?
IV: In our case, I think it’s the complicated relationship between retailers, suppliers and implementation agencies, that we had no idea about when we first started. The decision making process is very long and it goes through a lot of filters that we cannot influence at all.
We thought that having a better solution would be enough. But it’s not. Sometimes there are other unknown factors that influence the success of your business.
RTIH: What's the best question about your company or the market asked of you recently by a.) an investor and b.) a customer?
IV: Recently once of our investors asked us something like: My mother wants to invest in Tokinomo as well. Can you keep the round open for her? The best thing about it...it was not a joke.
The best question from a client was: Do you have 5,000 devices in stock? At first we sort of panicked because we didn’t have that many devices, but then we all started laughing because that’s a nice problem to have, isn’t it?
RTIH: What can we expect to see from Tokinomo over the next 12 months?
IV: Regarding product development, you can expect a lot of extra innovation, improvements and additional features. We cannot disclose them, but what we can tell you is that we are using the feedback from our clients to improve the functionalities, data, metrics and, in the end, the customer engagement.
Regarding our business plans, we are currently expanding our operations all over the world. So our hope is that, in the next 12 months, you will see a Tokinomo device in any store, wherever you might be.