"Just because we know it’s going to revolutionize the world doesn’t mean that everyone else really understands that. And having a disruptive product means there’s nobody really who’s actually gone down this path before."
In this episode, we take a closer look at Invenda's journey as CEO & Co-Founder Jon Brezinski shares how to spearhead innovation in the retail space, to go fully digital.
"Just because we know it’s going to revolutionize the world doesn’t mean that everyone else really understands that. And having a disruptive product means there’s nobody really who’s actually gone down this path before."
In this episode, we take a closer look at Invenda's journey as CEO & Co-Founder Jon Brezinski shares how to spearhead innovation in the retail space, to go fully digital.
Jon: (00:02)
Patience, patience is key to everything. And just because we know it's going to revolutionize the world doesn't mean that everyone else really understands that. And being a disruptive product means there's nobody really who's actually gone down this path before. So, you don't have any reference points or data that you can come back and sit at the table and say, this is what's going to do for your business. It's all hypothetical.
Christine: (00:28)
Welcome to the Lost in Transformation podcast series dedicated to the complex world of Digital Transformation. We feature guests from large corporations, start-ups, consultancies and more, to shed light on the success factors around Innovation, Transformation, and adjacent topics.
We share first-hand insights and inspiration from experts for all the intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs, and anyone curious about Digital Transformation.
Christine: (00:57)
Jon Brezinski is the Founder and CEO of Invenda, an automated retail software company that has built a brain for vending machines! Invenda revolutionizes retail with innovation, and Jon takes us on the company’s journey to share his learnings on how he manages to transform the retail space to fully digital. We hope you enjoy this episode!
Christine: (01:21)
Hi John, thanks for joining us today on the show on Lost In Transformation, and we're really happy to have you here as a guest, and thank you so much for taking the time today. So you are the founder and the CEO of Invenda, which is an automated retail software company, where you're doing a lot of great work in transforming the retail environment. And we're super excited to hear more of that today in the session. But to jump right in, we'd like to learn more about yourself and your background first, basically the journey that led you to where you are today. Can you share a bit about that?
Jon: (01:57)
Of course. Thank you Christine, and thank you for hosting me. I'm actually American, but I live in Switzerland and I actually was doing some management consulting where I ended up doing a ticket vending project for Xerox, which is now Conduent. And we saw that the technology that was being utilized and ticket vending was actually far more advanced than in snack machines and drink machines, but the actual base, components were the same. So we were working in train stations, and next to the machines, the ticket vending machines were these snack machines, and they were stuck in the dark ages. So we saw this as an opportunity to actually step forward and innovate using similar principles that were being used in the ticket vending genre or product line.
Christine: (02:47)
So now you're leading Invenda, coming up with intelligent vending solutions, and now to explain what you're doing and why these solutions come up, let's wind back a bit to when Invenda only just started. Back in the day, could you tell us a bit about the situation that kind of triggered that idea that it felt like the retail environment needed to really be transformed? What was the situation like before, basically that you perhaps saw as a catalyst for change?
Jon: (03:17)
I mean, what we saw, anybody who's ever watched a film there, their impression of vending is generally very negative because every film, when you have a vending machine, and it shows somebody beating the machine, trying to get their product out of it, it's stuck. The experience is perceived as generally negative and honestly, the vending machines are, I'm not that young anymore, and the vending machines that you see on the street are exactly the same vending machines that we had in my school, and I was a boy. And I don't understand how the industry hasn't been disrupted before. And vending is actually an extension of retail in general. And I see that we can actually combine all of the different leavers from retail into a single platform. So basically what happened is that once I started coming to some of these ideas, I was discussing them with some of my team from Xerox.
Jon: (04:05)
And we came up with some different ideas on how to approach this. And then we also saw the growth, the explosive growth of digital signage. So the [...] sector, but that was always really separated from retail. And we saw an idea, an opportunity that we could combine that product with actually a point of sale, and really feature products in a more exciting way than they're being presented right now. And help people choose products, better inform them about the products that they're actually buying. And obviously for the brands actually sell more products. So it was a really cool opportunity to do that. And at the same time, Xerox decided to move a lot of their development to India. Basically releasing a lot of their resources that they've been using to build the technical or the ticket vending machine.
Jon: (04:53)
So we came back and started talking and like, okay, rather than that, all of this knowledge and experience go to waste and why don't we use these people to continue growing and in the vending sector to utilize experience, basically cut off a lot of learning and development time. And then we came to the point where we have started discussions with Intel and saw that Intel had similar logic and thinking, and had actually been developing something for automated retail. They had this SDK and even some hardware components that would help maybe standardize how all of these machines interact and make it very easy for us to actually build something. And Intel was very excited to have our company come in and, actually really want to utilize this technology. They'd spent years building it and get very little traction.
Jon: (05:44)
Intel's interest is actually selling silicone and they see that there are 15 million vending machines out on the street. And, none of them actually have any intelligence for a PC. And so they want to actually start addressing that. But they're more of a hardware company rather than a solutions company. So they thought pairing with a software company and people with experience like us with the office super advantageous. So they really helped help to trigger getting this, moving this forward and, you know, getting people who had experienced and who we had actually worked together, I'd worked together with before and knew how they functioned was super advantageous as well. So, then we started approaching vending operators and manufacturers to see where we could actually go with this.
Jon: (06:29)
And who was then one of the first vending operators that you approached? How did that go?
Jon: (06:35)
So, the first operator we approached was Selecta and Selecta is based here in Switzerland. So that was very convenient for us. They thought it was a really cool idea and a really cool solution, but they had other problems to work on. They were launching an IPO at the same time. So, I looked into who owns Selecta, found that it was KKR, and ended up approaching the portfolio manager who was responsible for Selecta. And then we explained to them how digitalizing their existing business could actually result in explosive growth and revenue and a lot of new revenue streams.
Jon: (07:10)
So they were immediately interested and, and pushed back to Selecta to actually move forward on something like this. So ultimately they gave us three months to come up with a proof of concept. All I presented the KKR were some pieces of a vending machine and connected them to my laptop. I pulled them out of my suitcase in their office in London, connected everything together, and showed them what we could do with different pieces of a vending machine. But they told us we had three months to come up with a real vending machine and make this work. And, somehow through blood, sweat, tears, and everything else, we actually managed to pull this off and got Selecta onboard, working with us on a pilot and to start showcasing this technology. And Intel was really supporting the journey as well, helping us try to markets, providing technology. They actually provided us all the source code for their existing solutions that we could borrow upon, and actually move into the sector much faster than we would've if we had to start from scratch.
Christine: (08:09)
It's super exciting to hear how it basically came about from scratch, from the very start, now that you look back on the journey. And I also really liked the fact that you were mentioning, you know, how everybody knows it from movies, how it's not working, how everyone's like banging against the vending machine or, that actually there's, you were mentioning like 15 million vending machines that are without intelligence out there. So I think, now this number really makes you realize that there's so much that can be done in the environment.
And actually, this is something that we come across in our daily lives so often without perhaps even realizing it. So I think there's a lot of cool stuff that you guys can do with your work. And you have also already mentioned some clients that you were working with. I can imagine that perhaps, you know, it might not always be that easy, trying to, to help the clients with their struggles or, basically, do you have examples of how they perhaps accept change and transformation to move their business forward? Are they quite open or quite reluctant to change in their environment?
Jon: (09:11)
That depends on which players in the organization they actually have. There are several different things that drive the business: one, we actually started the company with this green concept with 15 million machines in the market. We didn't want to throw those 15 million machines away. We saw an opportunity to actually transform those machines into really modern marvels without actually completely replacing them. So our initial path was actually to go through and retrofit these machines and they can be 30, 35 years old. The first machines we did for Selecta were from 1986. So over 30 years old, and we were able to take this really old-looking, traditional vending machine and turn it into basically a giant iPad. So from a green perspective, a lot of these large FMCG companies and basically any large company has a green initiative where they need to try to find ways to recycle and avoid waste.
Jon: (10:06)
And then through the technology, we're also able to manage their electrical consumption, monitor their electrical consumption because these machines right now in the traditional environments, they basically run full on 24 hours a day, even in environments where there are only customers, there are five days a week, eight hours a day. So we wanted to be able to help them, decrease their overall consumption. So from a management perspective, they see this as a huge opportunity. It helps them plug into their green initiatives. But it also helps them drive new revenue streams so that we can increase sales. We take, for example, integrating with the digital out-of-home technology, we have players with scheduling and all of this. We're able to actually drive sales growth that they wouldn't actually normally be able to do, because if you picture a traditional vending machine, it's either a picture of a product, a static picture, or it's actually the plastic wrap product itself.
Jon: (10:55)
And that doesn't really initiate somebody's desire to consume. So if you look at how McDonald's, and a lot of these fast food companies are actually starting to use digitalization and they're in their direct selling at the point of sale, they make the products look delicious. So if you took a picture of a box of a big Mac, it's not really going to sell a lot of big Macs, but if you show the big Mac with steam coming off of it and the melting cheese and the water dripping on the salad, people buy a ton of them. And McDonald's alone has seen a 70% growth in sales, through automated retail, because they're actually showing the consumer the real product. So from a marketing perspective, a management perspective, they're really interested and we have experienced and proven this by animating products, for example, on the screen.
Jon: (11:44)
So, we worked with Coca-Cola as well. And, with Coca-Cola, they have a product that hasn't really performed super well in the markets. It's a kind of Chamomile green tea mix, and they put it in one of our vending machines and it's sold rather poorly, actually not at all, which was what they expected, because that's what it was doing in the other traditional machines. And so what they came back with was the idea, okay, let's see how powerful digital advertising is. So they placed an ad on the vending machine and they also animated the product on the front of the screen. So not making it look really, really cool or anything, but just moving it on the screen and the product continuously sold out. So on average, also with Mars and other vendors, we see 50% sales growth just by animating a product on the screen by drawing people's eyes and attention to that product.
Jon: (12:31)
Where we do have some resistance is actually more on the merchandisers and the people actually maintaining and filling these machines. And from a management perspective, the reason they're reluctant is actually very obvious, and that we can actually monitor the efficiency of the team, making sure that people are actually performing their jobs effectively. So are they filling the machines properly? How fast they're filling those machines because all of this stuff is monitored online. And so you can imagine from somebody who basically had free reign to take a whole day to fill three vending machines, and it doesn't matter if they're next to each other, could be hours between the servicing. Being able to say, look, you spent 15 minutes between these two machines and they're sitting next to each other, what happens.
Jon: (13:15)
And, we can see that actually only half the machine was filled because the products were being sold and they weren't being delivered because we're monitoring, obviously when any product is actually delivered or failed delivery. And then we have to actually go back to the consumer and offer them another option if they don't get their product, but it triggers alarms in our system to come back and say, look, it says there are eight bottles of Coke and this machine, but there were actually only four. And the merchandiser actually said they filled eight in that machine. And they took adequate time to fill that. So what actually happened? So that's where we see some resistance and also vending is a very traditional old-school business. The fact that the machines haven't changed in 30 years is no accident. The people in it have been working in it from the very beginning.
Jon: (14:02)
And honestly, vending has been a very stable industry. So they haven't really had a real need for growth. It's only in recent times with the introduction of a lot more innovative solutions like kiosks and, these convenience shops, that their sales have actually started to diminish. So, looking at competition now, there's a demand for innovation, but traditional operators don't really see that demand. And don't really understand it. So it can be very intimidating to understand that how all of this works online. And it's a software as a service model.
So you can pull up and see your machines anywhere in the world and monitor their performance and making sure that they're selling. We go so detailed as to be able to say were on them on the screen, products should be optimally positioned to sell better. We can look at expiration dates of the products and say, these products actually need to be replaced, or we need to drive more sales of that. So there is a lot more motivation from more senior management because they can see the bigger picture, but I think we get a lot more resistance from the technical servicing and merchandising side of the business. It's a general resistance to change, is challenging.
Jon: (15:12)
So we didn't really calculate that. We thought everybody would come in. I mean, I'm a software engineer, so by trade, I get very excited about technology. So when I'm faced with an opportunity, I really just dive into it. But never really considered how this might impact people who don't think as I do. So I think that was a problem. In the very beginning of the company, I and the engineering team got really frustrated that people just didn't jump on it and react like, wow, this is going to change my life. It's like, wow, this is gonna change my life. So it has been a bit tricky and the first year was really, really challenging getting that retention or attraction.
Christine: (15:51)
It's interesting to hear that you also, you have to take everyone into account, that a lot of people have different motivations that depending on their position in the company, that you know, it might impact their work in a different way. And it's also really fascinating to hear how much data you have, how far you've come along the way, and also really inspiring to hear how you notice that there's a certain gap in the retail environment and decided to come up with a solution for it also to increase revenue and so forth. Especially in an environment where change is not the norm, as you mentioned, that you know, people can be reluctant. So for Invenda, do you have an overarching vision or purpose that keeps you going that basically forms the core?
Jon: (16:36)
For us, our vision is actually to end up becoming more or less the de facto standard, the operating system for automated retail. So we see that vending itself, was the gateway into this industry. But, through our solution, we're able to actually transform lots of different aspects of the business. So you can build kiosks, these smart coolers and integrate all of these different sales points. And if we take, for example, also going back to McDonald's. They have, I think it's in every restaurant, has between 20 and 30 different systems that are totally not connected and operating more or less autonomously. And then they try to build the interfaces between all of these systems and make it work, and that's inefficient and very expensive to maintain and operate and even integrate. So, from our perspective, we want to come in and basically provide a platform that can be used to connect a lot of these different systems, and really make it efficient for them, and then provide a holistic overview of their performance of all of their different POS systems.
Jon: (17:36)
So I think generally how their sales function and the data is immense, what we can help them, or we can use that to help them drive efficiency, and not just servicing and interaction, but also in the customer experience. So, the machines themselves or any of the devices are actually fitted with an optical sensor, and with that optical sensor, we're able to determine basically the demographic of our consumers or the consumers, or even the audience where the machines or our devices are located. So, another example of that is we actually received information from Mars in one market, we did a test in Russia and the marketing team came back and told us what products different people would actually buy. So they told us women would buy bounty bars and I think it was mineral water.
Jon: (18:23)
And men would buy sweet drinks and Snickers bars. And what we found that data was really good if you're in a traditional supermarket where they're actually checking out and somebody's watching them or even a convenience store, but what happens in automated retail is very different. When it's anonymous, people actually have had a tendency to buy differently and more. So that again goes back to McDonald's being able to sell 70% more from a kiosk than they can from a person. But what we saw in Russia is that, when it's anonymous, women thought a lot of double-size hazelnuts Snickers bars, and sweet drinks. And men actually bought mostly healthy bars, [...] bars or granola bars, and fruit juices. So we come back to the marketing department and say, look from the data it looks like you're probably focusing on automated retail. You're looking at, you're focusing on the wrong groups, the wrong categories, and the wrong products.
Jon: (19:18)
So using this data, we can actually help basically drive more efficiencies in their sales, which is pretty awesome, pretty powerful, and interesting. But even from a very basic standpoint, we can tell them from where the location of the machine is, how many people are walking by at any given time. So traffic patterns, if they look at the machine, how many men and women and the age groups of those categories. So we can start even testing the theories on which products would actually be more appropriate for which people, and at what time of the day, and all of that. So, and then from an advertising perspective, I mean, these machines are very often located in prime places.
Jon: (19:49)
Product presentation becomes extremely critical. Even things we're monitoring how the whole buying process actually goes, right. And see if a consumer selects the product and removes it. So basically they're changing their mind, maybe having some times of guilt about buying a real Coke instead of a Coke zero. So I can use these patterns of recommendation actually. I can actually convince them, with maybe a little discount or something. Why don't you take the coke too? And then yeah, you don't feel so guilty cause you actually saved a little bit of money. All psychology.
Christine: (20:21)
All psychology. I think you probably found a lot of really interesting insights also about the buying behavior of people or, you know, what kind of patterns you found out along the way. So with so much that you went through from the very start, how it started in the very beginning to find out the right path, there were already some insightful learnings you mentioned along the road. Now looking back, what would you say are perhaps your biggest learnings? Anything you'd like to especially highlight?
Jon: (20:49)
Patience, patience is key to everything. And just because we know it's going to revolutionize the world doesn't mean that everyone else really understands that. And being a disruptive product means there's nobody really who's actually gone down this path before. So you don't have any reference points or data that you can come back and sit at the table and say, this is what's going to do for your business. It's all hypothetical. So you're coming back and presenting all of this and saying, look, we think it's going to do this. And we can take the digital out of the home industry and say, look, this is how much money they make. And this is how much the vending industry makes and to try to combine those in a business case. But the reality is getting people to actually believe that without actually having anything it's really been challenging.
Jon: (21:33)
Getting industry experts on board to actually support it as well has been extremely challenging. I went to one of the biggest European vending associations there, their conference in the year. And I was told by some major players that they aren't really interested in this kind of technology. They think the biggest advancement in the industry was brighter light bulbs because you can see the products better or maybe contactless credit card payments, which is really good. And that's basically the limit of where we really need to go. So you're constantly being beaten down with your ideas and say, okay, you can't prove it. And, you just stand back up and say, look, give me a chance, and we'll give it a shot, but that takes a long time. So if you look at our business plan from the very beginning and what we expected to do versus what actually happens, it's very frustrating.
Jon: (22:26)
And even from some of the early investors, it's been very frustrating because it just takes too long, but that's basically the essence of disruption. Nobody's going to jump up and say, change my life. They're going to find out that, that it's actually better for them. And then eventually they'll start motivating themselves to move in that direction. So I think that's the biggest thing is patience. Understanding that the way we think is not necessarily the same as everyone else. And then we have to win them over for taking that time and making them understand. So we're still in the battle. We are making progress, and the fact that we actually have really successful pilots and basically the customers we've been working with who continue working with us because they also see the opportunities, it's really rewarding and motivating for myself and the whole team.
Christine: (23:13)
I think it's probably hard to learn it firsthand to see, okay, there are people not believing in the ideas, but to keep going. And then to experience, as you already mentioned, you had a successful pilot and so forth. I think this is probably something that takes time. It's really interesting to see how far you've come with Invenda already on the journey. And, because you were already talking about success, what would you say, what's the situation where you've been successful with your work? Or would you define any specific moment as a point of success or do you actually look at it that way?
Jon: (23:49)
Of course. I mean, I don't consider that we're successful yet because we haven't revolutionized the world and we still have a long way to go. But, there have been some points where I think myself and the team freely celebrated. The first one was getting our first machine installed somewhere in public. So we started in the Paris Metro, and that was a really exciting time, a scary time for all of us too because we're a software company. So we can test everything in every possible scenario that we could expect, but the real world is totally different and people do dumb stuff. So we can't actually calculate on every possible scenario. So when you put it out in the wild, then you're like, okay, crap, what's going to happen now. I mean, it was a really, really big day for us when they started turning machines on, and watching the public, the general public interact, and then starting to analyze the data that was coming in and seeing what was happening.
Jon: (24:43)
So I think that was a really big journey or a big part of the journey. And, we continue growing and getting more machines out in public. And, now we even have customers building their entire strategy around our product now, massive company. So that's actually been, I think that's really helpful in keeping the team moving forward, and motivating, and then looking at how we can use this product to revolutionize other aspects of this industry. So taking the technology that we have in the vending machine and applying that to a refrigerator, for example. So Coca-Cola has hundreds of thousands of these refrigerators around the world, and they have no intelligence, they really have actually absolutely no insight into what's being sold and say, when it's being sold and it's a missed opportunity again.
Jon: (25:28)
So taking a really small piece of our technology and implementing it there, it's really cool. So I think, moving forward with some of these other products and seeing the reception of these products from major brands is also also very rewarding. And I think a CEO of one of the major vending machine manufacturers, when I met him in the very beginning with Intel, he laughed at me and told me, people just don't need this. They don't want it. But now we're actually starting to get the attention. I think of some of the vending machine manufacturers because basically, we've changed the whole, how this is being perceived. We're able to bring really top modern technology to the market for a fraction of the costs that they're able to do because we have a recurring license model and revenue model, where we maintain our customer relationships and partnerships in the longterm, and we don't actually have to make all of our money upfront.
Jon: (26:19)
So we can actually undercut the industry prices significantly, but still, bring a much better product to the market. So I think, that's also, it feels pretty cool, a little bit scary, but I think that's also very exciting and seeing how that's resonating in the industry is also rewarding. But yeah, I mean the first time somebody paid a bill, we are really, really excited about having any revenue at all. It is rewarding, even though it doesn't cover anywhere near what the expense or the investment is, to get to that point that. I had a glass of wine the first day somebody paid a bill.
Christine: (26:57)
It does sound super exciting. The types of successes you've had along the road. And, we're obviously always inspired to hear about the successes and the learnings from our guests and to see what impact they've made in driving innovation forward. But at the same time, we're also equally interested in anything that perhaps didn't work out the way you imagined. Are there any mistakes you made along the way that you'd like to share or anything that didn't work out the way you expected in the first place and that made you get up and try again?
Jon: (27:27)
Of course. I would love to say no, but I'd be lying through my teeth. We've made a lot of mistakes, basically trying to find fast, quick solutions, which at the time were really advantageous. We could actually, I mean, even using some of the technology from Intel, it helped us, really move into the industry very quickly. But we were forced to encompass a lot of different variables that didn't really apply to our solution. And it was quite expensive because they built a solution that fit everything. So when it comes down to it, you're paying a lot of money for all of these different connectors and sound. You have a really heavy software base that actually is supposed to support all of the things that we simply never used. And in the end, resulted in bugs that we ended up continuously having to address.
Jon: (28:17)
So while at the time it was a really appropriate and super decision, and hindsight, it was would have probably been better to take a few months and start clean and pull out only the pieces that we need. And really start more efficiently and maintain control. I mean, from a hardware perspective, we've always said we only want to focus on software. So in the beginning we just tried to work with partners to manufacture and we would just provide software solutions, but there wasn't anybody, there wasn't a solution that we could actually interact with. So we had to pivot very heavily and ended up started manufacturing our own machines and our own PCVs and interface boards. And, that was also a painful, difficult mistake. I know when we hired our first hardware engineer, it was expected that that would be a temporary thing.
Jon: (29:04)
We wouldn't need it very long-term. It was just to fix some problems. And then we started realizing that we became very, very reliant on this and that department actually ended up growing to be one of the biggest departments in the company because there just isn't anybody else that can do this stuff. So in order to make a holistic solution from hardware to software, you need all those different aspects of engineering. I think also putting too much influence or pressure on a single customer. So we maybe had too high expectations from some of our projects and we've had the pivots and distribute some of our needs or our demands to other customers. But I think that's also from a startup that that's very often the case, you basically are chasing leads. And, I guess our opportunity for success is from the very beginning was only with a few major key clients to make it work.
Jon: (29:59)
And then as we grow more successful and get more saturation, we're able to bring on smaller clients as well. So, at first, there have been so many mistakes I couldn't even think, and they're all rushing into my head and I'm not sure which ones I should publicize and which ones not.
Christine: (30:17)
I think, perhaps we all have to make all of these mistakes first in order to learn from them, but it's really inspiring also to hear that you say, okay, like there are so many mistakes, but you still have a lot of success and you find your way and you get people to also believe in your idea.
So I think that's naturally just part of the journey, and very great to hear that. Not everything needs to be as smooth sailing to turn out great. You'll have to have some bumps in the road.
Jon: (30:46)
I think anybody who tells you it's smooth sailing is a liar, and we embrace our mistakes. We actually, internally have a policy, we don't punish mistakes. We punish hiding mistakes because we can't actually fix them if nobody brings them forward. And, we're all in this together. We're a team. So when we see something, the interaction or the reaction is immediate and it's holistic. So all of us deal with it together and find the solution as quickly and efficiently as possible. But if we didn't own our mistakes, we would never have made it this far. And, the worst thing is when you have to sit down with a customer and say, look, we found a bug and we're fixing it, but, sorry and that is. I've had to do it so many times now and it's really horribly uncomfortable, but I think in general, you get respect from your customers as well, and that you're not trying to hide things. And as they're buying into disruption and changing of their business, they have an expectation for some of this as well. They don't expect everything to be flawless, and their own businesses it's not flawless. So I think a lot of people start off and really pretend like everything is going swimmingly and perfect. And that's the best way to get to raise suspicion because as soon as you do that, then everybody knows you're hiding something.
Christine: (32:04)
So probably be open about your mistakes and manage expectations is a great way to start there. Thanks so much for taking us along the journey from the beginning until basically now, till today, and now looking at the future, is there anything you're especially looking forward to for Invenda or anything in the retail environment or in general, that's next for you that you can perhaps share with us already?
Jon: (32:32)
Of course, I mean Covid is, as a tragedy to the world is actually living through at this point. And, while in 2019 there was a lot of push for innovation and people were really interested, now there's actually a drive for it and the need for it. So I'm moving into this environment with automated retail and other products. We've actually patented it as a contactless delivery system. So we can actually, without ever touching a machine, you can actually buy products. I think that's super cool. And then through our mobile integration, we have a browser-based or mobile application. You can scan the QR code from a vending machine, see the contents of that machine, buy the products, to your phone, and then they're delivered without you ever having to touch the machine because the products are actually raised up and delivered through this delivery tray.
Jon: (33:17)
I think, this stuff really excites me. And, while I think COVID is devastating to the global economy, I see that this is an opportunity for us to make the user experience or enhance the user experience and make things better. So I find it also exciting, and scary, and the fact that a lot of our partners and customers are also economically struggling to find ways through this, which we're also helping them do. So we are also building new economic models to help our customers actually basically build out this innovation without having to invest a huge amount of capital. So we have partners working with us to find different financial models that will help basically ease the CapEx of pains but still allow them to innovate. So if we look at the hospitality industry, we see we have a super cool product for that, where, I mean, everybody goes to a hotel, so, you know, they have vending machines on every floor. And, you still have to have coins you're digging through, but everywhere else in the hotel, you just use your room key.
Jon: (34:19)
So why do I have to carry money? I can just use my room key for that. And, I just use Marriott as an example. I've been staying, I don't know, over two years in Marriott hotels, I have a million points that are not using for anything, but they sit on the balance sheet of Marriott as a liability. Why don't I help people convert those points to Coca-Cola? But I can also use that sales point because it's online. I can use it also to check out. I can use it to order room service. I can use it to check-in. So combining that with different kiosk applications, I'm addressing COVID things and you don't need to interact directly with people anymore. You can do things yourself, and it's actually more convenient than it generally than interacting with people. It's building upon experiences that everybody already has using Google and their online browsers, and really just making the experience better.
Jon: (35:10)
So I'm super excited about some of these opportunities that are coming forward and then combining them with the refrigerators because really there are millions of them and they're really dumb. And I really think that we can actually help make the experience there better too. And helping people buy more conveniently, less need for cash and coins. I don't even really need to carry a wallet anymore. My phone has my credit cards and that I use that for payment and the adoption rate of that since COVID is actually increasing significantly and making it super convenient for consumers. Just to basically fluidly use their phones to do everything is awesome. So I'm excited to be a part of this revolution, I guess, is what it would be more mostly considered, and for Invenda, I just see endless opportunities and how we can make this interesting and fun. There are just so many things that you can do that really enhance the consumer experience. Also, enhance the capability or ability of brands to reach more consumers and sell more products.
Christine: (36:09)
It's super exciting to hear what type of opportunities there are out there. And also how basically this COVID situation that we're in right now is driving the digital transformation and makes room for a better and enhanced consumer experience, as you mentioned. That's a super interesting outlook as well.
Jon, thank you so much for sharing your journey with Invenda and all the successes and mistakes along the way. And it's also really inspiring to hear about your learnings. It's been a real pleasure and I'm curious to see what the future holds for Invenda. Thank you again.
Jon: (36:44)
Thank you, Christine. We're excited to see it too, and really appreciate you taking the time for this. I think it's been fun.
Christine: (36:51)
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