Silver Curve

Market

Target market

We have two main target markets.

The first are small organisations who require a small number of screens and where a quick purchasing decision can be made. We aim to be selling hundreds of this type of system each month by mid 2015 through multiple resellers.

The second is the volume sale to a large corporate client, for example a supermarket chain. These sales can take months to secure but can result in a large number of licence sales (typically 1000s).

We and our partners are now starting to receive enquiries from resellers for both small and large projects. We expect these activities to generate revenues commencing in Q3 2014.

We have been approached by these partners to participate in four major projects, all of which are covered by NDA so we can’t name the companies:

- Multinational IT manufacturer.

We have demonstrated Aperture to their teams on two continents and are discussing how we could use it to improve the performance of their device. Assuming it goes ahead, we believe this project could result in an extremely large number of orders for units and licences.

- Multinational retailer.

Installing screens in store on a huge scale. We are assisting our partner, a multinational screen manufacturer, to win this project.

- Multinational IT manufacturer.

We are in discussions with the manufacturer to provide a player and content creation service, under their own brand.

The service would be sold through their resellers, initially in the UK and then internationally.

- Multinational retail supplier.

Looking to put screens in their merchandising stands to be supplied to stores that stock their goods. For each of the above projects we would provide Aperture licences and, when appropriate, content creation services and cloud hosting management. Our partners will provide hardware and software.

Each of these opportunities has the potential to deliver revenues in excess of a million pounds to the company if they were to be secured and fulfilled by us.

Characteristics of target market

The digital signage market has become established over the past 10-15 years and is set to become the norm for displaying information. As yet it appears far from saturated.

For all major retailers digital signage is an integral part of their marketing strategy and can be seen in any major city worldwide.

Advertising is a heavy user of digital signage, with flagship installations such as London Underground escalators and Piccadilly Circus.

Based on our knowledge of the market we believe that over the next few years, European retailers will install tens of thousands of screens in their store portfolio. With one Aperture licence per screen, the revenue opportunity from this sector alone is enormous.

Other markets include anywhere you see a poster today.

The Silver Curve team has an excellent understanding of end user requirements in the target markets as well as the management and procurement processes.

Marketing strategy

Silver Curve’s direct customers are signage OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), who sell on to resellers or end-customers. Our OEM partners and their resellers are targeting both small and large projects.

We have spent the past few months carefully building an out-of-the-box solution allowing the customer and the reseller to be self sufficient. As a result we are looking to sell hundreds of small projects each month through our reseller channel.

This enables us to focus our sales and support resources on the large projects that require our integration and customisation services. We will support our partners with pre-sales content creation and proof of concept solutions.

Our first reseller, AVM Impact, is already bringing us enquiries from several small and medium sized clients.

We have planned approaches to a number of new resellers in the UK and overseas. Silver Curve is in an ideal position to make these approaches, utilising the contacts established by our CTO and Business Development Director who each have many years of experience in the industry and know the major players.

Bryan Crotaz has been invited to join the jury of the Digital Signage Best Practice Awards in Frankfurt this year, for the third year running. This continues to be a valuable networking opportunity, spending significant time with significant potential partners and pan-European customers.

Product promotion will be achieved through a flexible mixture of direct contact, magazine advertising, exhibitions and speaking engagements at conferences and events.

We will support our hardware and software partners with marketing materials showing the advantages of an Aperture-powered system. We will also support them on trade show stands with bespoke content and demonstration systems showing how Aperture can be best used in real world environments.

Our current partner network has international reach and is in active discussion on projects across the world.

Competition strategy

Other small cheap players are available. Why would you choose an Aperture player?

Digital signage is all about the visuals. Aperture has been built to enable better visuals.

Users can:

- use artistic animated templates to display pictures and text
- change content quickly and easily - push live data into their templates
- avoid making videos in a costly edit suite

Most small players come with a single software package, with no choice for the user. If the software doesn’t fit their needs, they can’t use that box. Aperture powered hardware is designed to use any software integrated with Aperture. A user can choose the best hardware and software combination for their needs.

For some time it has been possible to buy a low-performance, low-power ARM media player, or a high-performance, high power PC player. Aperture enables PC quality visuals on small players. Taken on a worldwide scale we expect the demand for Aperture powered devices to be very substantial.

Based on our experience at exhibitions during the past few months we believe that Aperture is unique in being able to facilitate top-end signage software on ARM chipsets (eg the Pi). It is this USP that delivers the cost, size and convenience benefits. We have been able to do this due to our long experience in leading-edge digital signage software development.

Many of our contacts were dismissing the product as can’t-be-done, until they saw it being demonstrated earlier this year. It is our objective that, while we have a technology lead, we will sign up as many of the leading signage software providers as possible. This will make it difficult for any competitor coming late to the market to gain a foothold.

Silver Curve is a supplier, not a competitor. At the high visual quality end of the scale we believe that the leading companies have no active program to develop a low cost, high quality player. We expect to see their larger clients pushing them in the Aperture direction in order that they can benefit from the likely cost savings.