collectID Connects Physical Merchandise With Web3 by Using NFC Tags

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World’s shortest elevator pitch: “Our company connects physical products with the digital dimension.”

Company: collectID

Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Year founded: 2018

Website/App:  https://collectid.io/; Google App; Apple App

Funding round to date: “We did a Seed Round in December and we are Pre-Series A.”

Who are your investors? “We’ve raised around $3.5 million. The main investors are SeventySix Capital, a sports VC from the U.S., Hellen’s Rock Capital, an European sports investor and Sygnum/SBI, a crypto bank from Switzerland and Japan.”

Are you looking for more investment? “Not currently, but in a year or so, yes.”

Co-founder and CEO David Geisser was inspired to start collectID after a counterfeit experience on the secondary market.

Tell us about yourself, co-founder and CEO David Geisser: “I was affected by the problem we are solving. I bought a pair of fake sneakers in a shady web shop in Hong Kong because I couldn’t get them anywhere else on any other web shop and not on the official Nike page, etc. I bought this fake sneaker, they arrived at my place and obviously I was super disappointed. That was the moment I decided there must be a way to make sure not to buy fakes accidentally, and that’s how we started that journey. I went to the University of St. Gallen in Europe. I did my Bachelor’s there and then I worked in the consulting industry. I then came back to university for my Master’s in Business Innovation from St. Gallen but I did an exchange in Stanford and in St. Petersburg, Russia. After my Master’s and my exchanges, I started working again in consulting where I did innovation consulting and design thinking for typical Swiss customers like banks, insurance companies and healthcare. In 2018, I dropped out of the company and started collectID.”

Who are your co-founders/partners? “We have three other co-founders. Sergio Muster is a serial founder and a connoisseur of the sneaker industry. He’s a huge sneaker collector, he has around 800 pairs, so he knows the community of fashion and sneakers very well. He founded Sneakerness, which is Europe’s largest sneaker convention. We have Jeremy Smith, our lead blockchain developer. He’s basically the mastermind behind the technological development. He’s worked on Ethereum and other blockchain development for more than six, seven years, and he’s an outstanding developer. Dominik Fricker is our finance guy and has 15-plus years of experience in banking and finance.”

How does your product/service work? “We open up the digital dimension for physical products. We have a small and securely encrypted NFC tag that you know from your contactless banking card, so companies like Mastercard or American Express are using the same technology, and we put that small NFC tag into the physical product. That can be a piece of clothing, a sneaker or a football jersey. Then, we store a unique identity on each of these NFC tags. That means every single product gets its unique identity. By doing so, we can solve the problem of counterfeiting because you cannot copy this NFC tag. But we go even one step further. We take this unique identity, we store it through a smart contract as a non-fungible token, an NFT on the blockchain, and by that we create the digital twin of that product. For the consumer, it’s super simple. What they do is they tap their smartphone on the NFC tag and that’s how they access the digital twin of the product.”

What problem is your company solving? “We are solving the problem of counterfeiting, first. I wouldn’t say we make counterfeiting impossible, but we give every consumer a very easy way to differentiate between fake and authentic and also a way to prove that something bought is authentic, which is explicitly important when it comes to secondary trading. We also help brands and teams or our B2B partners to better understand their customer base or to access this data about the customer base. Because, obviously, when the fans or end consumer is interacting through our technology, with the physical product, at that point the brand gets a direct communication channel to that customer. By better understanding the customer, they can also better reach and engage with this customer.”

What does your product cost and who is your target customer? “Our product has a unit price that is approximately one euro, but it’s pretty much depending on the amount of products we sell. There are additional costs depending on the activation, which are very unique and special to each brand. Our target customers are sports organizations like teams, leagues, manufacturers, and then brands. That ranges from sports or fashion brands to other lifestyle brands, and could be Adidas, Nike, but also Gucci or Prada.”

How are you marketing your product? “We are focusing on B2B marketing and we are really doing it through LinkedIn and Twitter. What’s also very important is recommendation, so we are using existing clients and testimonials to attract further customers.”

How do you scale, and what is your targeted level of growth? “We scale through our customers because if we work with big brands, then we can equip multiple or hundreds, thousands of products with our technology, and get them in the hands of the end consumer. It’s B2B2C. Our target is to have equipped millions of products worldwide. We want to become the dominant player, at least in one industry, so if you look, for example, for sports, that in the majority of the products our technology is integrated in the next five years.”

Who are your competitors, and what makes you different? “We have a bunch of competitors and we try to separate them a little bit. We have the classic, let’s say authenticity companies that work, for example, with holograms or other physical marks on the product. Our product is much more secure and offers this possibility to interact with the consumer. You can look at the hologram, but you cannot really interact with it. We have other companies that do more on the blockchain or NFT side. There are clear differentiating factors in that connection of physical and digital. If we specifically look at direct competitors, there are some, especially in the luxury space, but the big differentiating factor is that on the one hand, we have some IP, like the patents we have in the U.S., but then also the experience we have in actually executing the stuff with sports teams. It’s important to understand how to use the product and what kind of experience to give to the fan. It’s also a lot about the experience design, and based on the multiple projects we have executed already we have quite a good understanding of that side.”

What’s the unfair advantage that separates your company? “The team and the knowledge. Working four years in that field gives us a certain kickstart or advantage. And most importantly, it’s actually the patent for the U.S.”

What milestone have you recently hit or will soon hit? “We have worked with top tier-one brands. We did our first deal with an NHL team in the Nashville Predators. The next step is to win a tier-one football team in the Champions League, teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Inter Milan, English Premier League teams or top-10, top-15 teams in Europe.”

Beyond the pandemic, what obstacles has your company had to overcome? “Generally, it’s the amount of opportunities that B2B partners have. Working with a football team, working in a fashion brand, you look at multiple opportunities to innovate and to come up with new things. That’s probably the most difficult part for us as well, to stand out in that mass of opportunities and to actually get brands on board.”

How has your company been affected by the current economic situation, and how are you dealing with it? “We were lucky that we raised funds before the economic downturn. We don’t really see an effect there with our clients, which is also quite OK because sport is quite resistant to crisis. Unless it’s a pandemic, where you cannot go to the stadium or the team cannot play anymore, but a financial crisis is not affecting the sports sector as hard as other industries. We have some contingency plans and some different scenarios built so that we make sure we have a long enough runway to overcome this current situation.”

What are the values that are core to your brand? “Our core values are, first, authenticity for everyone. We want to make sure that everyone with a smartphone can check the authenticity of any product that is equipped with our tech. You don’t need to be an expert, you just need to have a smartphone that is NFC-ready. The second point is authenticity for everything. Since the technology is not expensive and it comes at relatively low cost compared to the price of the product, it’s worth it to do it. These are our two key principles. Our internal values are that everybody has a voice, which is self-explanatory. It doesn’t matter if you’re a junior or graduate or a senior, you have a voice and your voice is heard here. The next two values are that we go the extra mile, which is very important for any startup because if we want to compete with the big boys and play the big game, we need to work harder than other companies in order to succeed and be successful in the long run. The last core value is the impact, so that your work actually has an impact. That’s very important for the new generation. For me, impact also comes always with responsibility. In other words, if you are not here because you’re sick or on vacation, we will notice, you will be missed. If not, then something is wrong. So everybody has an impact but, at the same time, responsibility. These are our core values internally: everybody has a voice, the extra mile and impact, and externally: authenticity for everything and authenticity for everyone.”

What does success ultimately look like for your company? “We have been successful if the critical number of products, at least in one industry, are equipped with our technology. So with the example of sports, if you buy three jerseys of major sports teams and one or two of them are equipped with our technology, that would be fantastic.”

What should investors or customers know about you — the person, your life experiences — that shows they can believe in you? “They should know that we work extremely hard. We never stop, we never rest. Even if 200 clients say no, we go for the next 200. We will not give up until this is successful. This mindset is deeply embedded for myself, so I could not look in the mirror anymore if I would think I could have done more than I did. That’s something I live by and I want to give to the employees and the next generation of people working at collectID so that we always need to work 200% or 300% in order to succeed. If someone invests in the company, you can 100% rely on that.”

What are some examples of how sports teams have used collectID? “We did a case with one of the biggest Brazilian football teams, Atlético Mineiro, and what we did with them was to equip 120,000 units with their product, so we did a jersey with our technology inside. This led to a lot of very good examples, with around 22.7% of the fans scanning their smart jersey and starting an interaction with the club. Because of that, around 15,000 people have downloaded the app of this team. They have acquired a lot of new app users, and around 10% of all the buyers have an ongoing interaction with the club and also bought additional products of the club or of sponsors. Last but not least, the club was able to increase the price 10% and that means they did around half a million more profit, and around $600,000 more revenues with that release of the product. It was a very substantial impact, both financially but also in terms of fan engagement. The fans really got something cool and the club had an outstanding fan experience that no other club could deliver like that. We also did examples with the Nashville Predators and FC Köln.”

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