Dean Dijour
founder
Morganville, New JerseyCollarator
Collarator is the first and only company to provide total peace of mind for pet owners by combining pet loss prevention with tracking and health/fitness monitoring. The CollaRadar, our flagship device, allows users to not only track their pets, but Read more...
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What problem does your solution solve?
One in three pets will go missing at some point in their lives. Collarator is the first and only company to provide total peace of mind for pet owners by combining pet loss prevention with tracking and health/fitness monitoring. The CollaRadar, our flagship device, allows users to not only track their pets, but also stop them from running away. Our versatile ecosystem allows for inter-device connectivity, enabling users to connect the CollaRadar to devices like automatic doggy doors, pet food dispensers and home cameras.
Rather than burying wires for electric fences, the easy to use platform allows users to create GeoFences with GPS to monitor/stop their pets from running away, leveraging flexible deterrents like high frequency speakers and vibration warnings. With the built in Bluetooth Low Energy, users can communicate with the device on their pet's collar to train their pets, send commands to the device, or log activity data. We package the only end-end solution for peace of mind.
What’s the market potential for your solution?
After conducting many interviews as part of the UC Berkeley Hardware Accelerator Program, in partnership with the America's Greatest Makers TV show, Collarator was able to figure out the right customer segments to target. Starting with the total market of house animals, there are over 180 million dogs & cats in the U.S. We decided on a roughly $150 price point for the main unit. After conducting interviews, we narrowed our initial market down to 80M dogs, and of those, assumed urban and rural buyers would be less interested than suburban buyers, so decided to initially target suburban dog owners between the ages of 18-60, as those would be most inclined to use the sort of technology we provide. This narrows the field to roughly 30-40 million dogs, and $4.5B-$6B in revenue. Conservatively speaking, if 30% of that 30-40 million is willing to pay, there are 10 million willing customers - roughly $1.5B in revenue. If just 10% of that 10 million pay, the revenue comes out to $150M.
Who are your customers?
Initially, our customers are the end users. They are tired of worrying about their pets running away, tired of having to make sure their pets are exercising, and tired of losing their peace of mind. We will sell to these customers and end users through online distributors like Amazon, and will initially use crowdfunding campaigns to reach early adopters.
Once enough traction is gained and sufficient market adoption is evident, we will pursue distribution agreements with large pet product retailers, like Petco and PetSmart, wherein these retailers will be the purchasers, and the end users will be their customers.
How will you reach your customers?
Fortunately for Collarator, we were featured on a multi-million viewer TV show, "America's Greatest Makers", and will continue to gain press and spotlight from that as reruns and follow up videos make their way to prime-time programming.
Aside from the press and spotlight from the TV show, Collarator is already in talks with numerous pet blogs, as well as in talks with various crowdfunding campaign platforms (thanks to connections from the TV show) to launch already vetted and "Staff Picked" campaigns to increase traction.
As a large portion of our market is technologically savvy, social media campaigns with targeted Facebook ads, funny videos, fun facts about pets, and a plethora of engaging content will be launched both before and after the crowdfunding campaign. These will all direct viewers to the Collarator website, which will hopefully result in a high turnover of visits into paying customers or crowdfunding campaign supporters.
How will you make money?
Collarator makes money from the users buying the hardware technology we sell, i.e. the CollaRadar and future IoT accessories like smart doggy doors and food dispensers. The goal is to create an ecosystem that ties users into the Collarator platform, encouraging them to buy more products to enhance their pet's lives.
Collarator will sell the CollaRadar for approximately $150 online and in stores, and at a soon to be determined discount on crowdfunding campaign sites, and will charge $7-$10 for SMS service fees per month. After conducting numerous customer interviews, these figures are appropriate for the majority of our market, as monthly pet food, medical, and toy costs are already significantly higher than Collarator's monthly $7-$10 service charge.
In high bulk (1,000+ units), it will cost roughly $30 to manufacture a CollaRadar. These figures are not set in stone yet, as Collarator would be open to working with oversees manufacturers to bring down the production costs.
What kind of partners will you need to make, support and distribute your solution?
Collarator will need help finding and communicating with reliable manufacturers, introductions to large retailers, supply chain management assistance, distribution strategy, and connections to potential capital partners for the purpose of financing the design and production of the CollaRadar.
What will your expenses include?
Collarator will spend money on fabricating and assembling printed circuit boards, creating injection molds for the enclosure, finding an iOS and Android developer to convert our Web application into a Hybrid application for both mobile operating systems, and a dedicated IoT engineer for future IoT devices. Collarator may also fund raise to finance purchase orders and packaging/distribution.
Who is your competition and how do you differ?
Currently, either companies work to stop pets from running away (electric fences), or they work to track pets (pet trackers). Electric fences can cost thousands of dollars and can be broken in seconds by gardeners and pets alike. They use old, radio frequency technology, and when there are coverage gap issues, pets can run through a gap without receiving a shock. Yearly maintenance fees burden pet owners, and if pets manage to escape the system, tracking them down is impossible.
The pet trackers merely tell pet owners where their pets are, while allowing them to create one circular geofence around their home that will alert the owners when their pet leaves the perimeter (sounds great in theory, but rarely works, and no one lives in a circular house).
Collarator provides an end to end solution. Our customizable wireless solution tracks pets, stops them from running away with built in deterrents, monitors fitness, and connects them to the internet of things.
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