TMH: Driven by cutting-edge IoT automation technology and proprietary software, Danavation Technologies is the only electronic shelf label provider grounded and based in North America. The company has noted rapid expansion across Canada and the United States, providing companies across various sectors smart labelling solutions.
Joining us today is John Ricci, the CEO of Danavation Technologies (CSE:DVN). Hello and welcome John.
First off, can you please give a quick introduction of the company to our viewers?
RC: Danavation Technologies is rooted in a company called Dana Industries. We’re a large player, total retail solutions, anything from store fixtures, shopping carts, baskets, trolleys, visual shelf merchandising, signage, and systems. That company’s been around since 1993, so a 30-year business that deals with most of the larger retailers in North America and a Canadian based company. In 2018, we founded Danavation Technologies as a digital component to our business focusing on at shelf digital transformation, replacing paper, labor, et cetera, at shelf and offering the latest and greatest to take stores into the store of the future. That was in 2018. We’ve been public since early January 2021. So, we’re two and a half years public company. We are a full-service designer and engineering company. We design and engineer our own software and hardware in Canada. So, we are the only North American based and grounded and founded provider in the digital smart label, electronic shelf label business.
TMH: Could you tell us more about your Digital Smart Labels technology and what sort of companies are currently using it?
RC: So, we use a low power Bluetooth technology power with no power to shelf required utilizing base stations that are like wireless routers that are linked to a company’s server and their head office. Everything is controlled by a head office hub, so you can control 100, 200, 500, 1000 locations and change pricing to click keystroke in your office of anything from, you know regular changes, SKU changes, putting products on sale things like that and updating information. So, a really efficient way of doing business that is used in not just food retailers, but other non-food retailers and other vertical markets that we are attacking at this point.
TMH: What benefits are the clients realising using this technology as opposed to using traditional labelling?
RC: Well, the traditional way of changing pricing was just a 40 plus year old technology of basically printing paper labels either in store or using a third-party marketing company, changing labels using labor, very tedious, error filled limitations by labor, by the number of people that you have. Not very flexible. So, you have to plan your SKU changes weeks ahead of time, put it on a schedule, sent out to the stores. There’s no flexibility in it and like I said it’s an error prone, things can get missed tech system. So that’s paper, so we’re eliminating paper in stores. We’re eliminating the labor aspect of changing the SKU’s or not eliminating labor. Let me be clear with that. You’re repurposing employees to do more efficient more important things in your stores, servicing customers, customer service, product demos, et cetera.
We’re taking away that the tedious work of SKU changes using paper. We’re also allowing retailers to really focus on their margins and maintaining margins, so margin analysis and then there’s all kinds of things that our software can do. So, we are a software company running a SaaS model pass model. So, there’s things that our system’s gonna be able to do for the retailer down the road that’s going to allow them to be more efficient and increase their profits and just overall providing the customer with a more positive dynamic modern shopping experience.
TMH: How does the company’s growth profile look like and what markets are key for this?
RC: Right now, we’re finding a lot of success in the hardware and lumber companies do it yourself companies, things like that, places like that. They have, in a lot of cases, 25,000 plus SKUs. Pharmacies are big liquor stores, grocery stores, of course, convenience stores petrol stations, combo gas convenience stores, anywhere and everywhere that you see price changing as an issue, is a market for the digital smart label.
TMH: Danavation has recently closed its financing, can you share more details about it and how the company plans to use the proceeds?
RC: That was just short term. We have a massive run-on installs and we use it for operating expenses, mainly inventory. So, it’s a way for us getting ahead of the curve and anticipating future orders. We had a backlog to fill with installs and that helped push us through. We could turn an assessment order to an install around in two weeks if we have inventory on the floor and that’s what the proceeds were meant for.
TMH: Is there any other update or any further development which you would like to share with our investors today?
RC: Digital smart labels are 80 to 90% adapted in Europe. It’s a small adaption rate in North America. We’re seeing everybody going towards digital right now. The larger format stores, largest retailers in the world are going towards digital. It’s just something that I would say two years ago when we were approaching our potential customers, it was something that was considered would be nice to have someday and then last year it was, we’re looking at it, we’re not ready yet and if we fast forward to now, it’s a system that we’re hearing that it, we have to have it. So, we’ve really seen a push on our customers asking for demos and assessments. Our orders have increased and we’re noticing that our phone call to assessment to order has really come down from the one month to two months in some cases, we’re getting orders after two weeks and we are hitting the ground really hard. We have some solid retailers under our belt and growing customer base.
TMH: It’s been a pleasure; thanks for making the time today, John.
Again, we’ve been speaking with John Ricci, the CEO of Danavation Technologies.
Head over to danavation.com for more information.
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