Imagine not only being able to buy online from your smartphone (for that there is already Amazon), but to be able to do it by taking a simple photo of the desired product, or capturing the audio in an advertising spot, and with a single click.
From today this will also be possible in Italy with the clothing brand Motivi, which unveils the novelty with an event in the Corso Vittorio Emanuele store in Milan: 14 items will be purchasable directly through the Powa Tag app, created by Powa Technologies, a British startup with a turnover of 25 million dollars, which boasts partnerships with 850 brands in 17 countries around the world and arrives for the first time in Italy.
“It's a revolution – he explains CEO Dan Wagner -: just download the application, register your data without having to re-enter all your credentials each time, and purchase any product at any time. In the shop windows themselves when it is closed, rather than on billboards, in newspapers, on television, on the tables of a bar, and so on”.
The Motivi store will be transformed into a "virtual shop" for two weeks by using the Qr code applied to the products displayed in the window, which it will therefore be sufficient to photograph from the outside, while for the audio Powa relies on the system Watermark, an ultrasound recognizable by the application without altering the sound perception of man.
“More than a virtual shop – he explains Germano Marano, director of the Italian market for Powa – I would call it a smart store, which should then be considered within the broader concept of smart city, whereby any human activity will be simplified: even, why not, paying for bus tickets, parking, car sharing as already is done, bills, etc”.
All with one app, all with one click. “We will get bigger than Amazon and Alibaba, because our system is even more agile and fast”, says Wagner confidently, present at the Italian premiere. “PowaTag will become an ecosystem, not a retailer. We are only facilitators: we make the application available to brands, and from the billions of possible transactions we get 30 cents (or 0,1% if it is greater) from each one. The rest is all about opportunities for the customer and profit for the brand”.
The instant shopping revolution therefore arrives in Italy and does so in grand style, given that Motivi, of the Miroglio group, is the second largest company of the 850 companies from all over the world already involved in the project, and the second ever to make its debut in Europe.
“We arrived first in France – says Wagner – with Cotonniers counter, but that was a 15-day campaign launched at the end of May while in Italy, after the first trial period (during which there is also a 10% discount on the items offered, ed), the service will go live".
At the moment the biggest player, launched in the summer, is the Indonesian supermarket Hypermarts, even if the wave of success is also reaching large-scale distribution in Europe: "Still in France - reveals the English CEO - we will close with Carrefour by November, after which we will focus on Galeries Lafayette".
“In Italy however – echoes Marano – we are at stake with 50 brands, and the hope is to launch another campaign by 2014”. Even in the Boot, which makes its debut immediately with a popular brand like Motivi, there is already talk of high-target objectives: "We are in contact for large-scale distribution, then there is electronics and even the airlines, for the purchase of tickets but also for other services”.
Powa is currently present on the Italian market with 15 employees (out of 500 worldwide) and is not afraid of the recession: “Buying will still be easier – argues Wagner -: if you were previously interested in a product and could afford it, you had go to the bank to get the money and then to the store. Then came the credit card. Then e-commerce. Now the smartphone with just one click”.
What if this revolution physically made shops disappear, favoring consumption but not jobs? “Years ago with the advent of the internet – is Marano's opinion – it was said: it will kill television. Instead, as we have seen, TV has become Smart TV and has expanded the solutions: more channels, more services, more interactivity. The same will be true for the shops, so much so that Motivi launches its campaign in a real shop, which will remain open simply allowing the customer to buy even when it is closed and also elsewhere”.
Indeed, the possibility of placing QR codes more or less everywhere could over time revolutionize and relaunch even the advertising market. “Take the newspapers – Wagner agrees -: what return can a brand have that buys a page to put a simple photo of its product? What is the return instead if the reader can buy directly from that page? He is no longer advertising, he is directly selling. He will be more inclined to purchase spaces in newspapers, and the newspapers will obtain greater earnings, also helped by the brand to understand days, times and places of greatest sales thanks to geolocation”.
A thorny issue, that of Big Data, but which opens up new and interesting commercial scenarios. After all, it is no coincidence that Powa Technologies was the most financed startup in history by a single venture capital through crowdfunding: it was paid 96 million dollars (76 last year, 20 this year) by the US investment fund Wellington, believing in a project that challenges the big names in e-commerce.
