Fobi Signs $240,000 Data Consulting Agreement With Kiaro Holdings

[Music] welcome to beyond the press release a production of gore kong in which we take the time to speak with small cap executives after they put out big news with us today we got not one but two great executives with us rob anson ceo and founder full bai trades in canada under fobi for friends of the yes fobif and with them daniel petrov ceo kiara holdings trades in the stock symbol ko a lot of you know about your company if they're being interviewed right now but you may not know about the other so let me give you a 20-second intro on each phobia a global leader in providing real-time data analytics through artificial intelligence to drive customer activation and engagement in the brick and mortar e-commerce space and that's underselling it because they've built a technology stack on top of that that's second to none in the world what you need to know to provide third-party validation is that they've complete integration with both with the likes of lightspeed and spotify to provide real-time point-of-sale data uh aggregation analytics to the customers of lightspeed or the retails on shopify and they also originally signed a 250 000 data consultant agreement with azin court energy similar to this one kiaro is one of canada's largest retailers of cannabis with 16 locations and forecasted annual revenue of 42.7 million dollars from these locations not including growth at a gross profit of 13.7 million dollars there's more to come more growth there together they've signed a data consulting agreement uh to help chiaro uh process all mass data from all those retail operations let's talk about it gents welcome to the show thanks george thanks george hey dan let's start with you because you know agoracom hears a lot from rob so let's hear from somebody else okay um it possibly says kiara to leverage the power of phobia real time ai to transform your approach to cannabis retail put that to layman's terms what did it mean when you saw it when you first saw phobia and what's it going to mean for your for your blowing up business you know what uh george it's hard to it's hard to capture kind of what i've seen and what the capabilities are in one go because at the beginning we were looking you know we're a tech forward data forward canvas retailer and at the beginning we're looking to solve our our challenges uh and what we had the opportunity to do in cannabis but but i'll do it in two parts i'll talk about that but then i'll talk about how i was just when i saw what phobia has as a platform to develop i was just blown away so wow i i i have a tech background computer science background i owned a good chunk of an ad company that i sold back in 2016 and i was still super blown away to see their platform so i'll tell you what what we need and then what we can do in canvas retail our retail information is segmented we have we you know even the pos systems we use the backend systems we use they're still being developed and they're not talking to each other they're different so for instance we're in ontario with this new package we bought and they need two different pos systems to do the same thing because one doesn't do delivery one does and so you can just see already how it's so disconnected we're the first company in ontario even to use a big erp in the back end out of all the companies that are already there so the fundamentals with this acquisition and everything we need to integrate and some analytics and some insights into what we already need organize our data see what it is and give us insights so we can better integrate and better have those tools it doesn't just do that it goes beyond that which i'm excited to get into once we have the data i mean i'll let rob speak to it but i mean uh the fact that what these what's being correlated on the phobia system is is is i've never seen before you got weather data seasonal data so all these other metrics of of hey what is driving traffic in your stores and what is what's really happening there it's amazing so i don't know if i explained it you know well there but it's it's two parts is what do we need currently as a cannabis retailer growing cannabis retail uh eat retailer and and man the phenomenal opportunity of exploration of tying these other data points and using ai to do it uh if you're just gonna blow your competition away unless they catch up and do the same thing and you've said before that it's pretty challenging for retailers just to know what's going on at in their stores in real time let alone all the way down the customer right how's this how's this uh relationship with folby going to change all that for you well it's going to tie it all together i mean what we're going to work on is that architecture of that whole ecosystem you know from when we're getting products in the door what products we're getting how is all that organized all the way to the customer and who's purchasing so i think it's going to give us full transparency from every point of our system of where we touch in our supply chain uh and i think rob can speak more to that but that's really what the expectation is to build that superior infrastructure that architecture uh to to really run our business and and have data-driven decisions rob um what does it mean to you to hear and i don't think it's the first time but what does it mean first just what daniel said this to hear from someone like him who's got a computer science background has a sold an ai company for him to be blown away is that the first time you've heard something like that or is that something you're hearing more and more in a lot of your uh big discussions with customers and potential customers no we hear it all the time i mean it's that's you know what we built the power of what we built the dynamic components of it and the end of it uh where i'm very excited because quite honestly when i looked at chiaro the digital innovation that they've come to market with is is second to none um you know they're one of the largest retailers within the country um they're absolutely crushing it if you look at their revenues um this is a huge opportunity for us something that we're very excited about it's our entry into cannabis market which is absolutely right for us because it's another fragmented regulated industry um perfect for the phobia technology and solving problems around interoperability data aggregation real time action um so now we're we're quite excited about this i think chiaro is you know growing very quickly as we saw with our hemisphere acquisition um the the story behind the company is relatively new and you know i see it as a huge opportunity so i'm glad you brought up what you said about entry to the cannabis center in the cannabis vertical this isn't just a one-off for you uh chiaro is gonna be and it's and and i think it's right to say rob that because chiaro is such a tech forward company already they're probably one of the best uh you could have started with to prove to the rest of the industry about your capabilities so what's your plan for the cannabis industry because canada's retailing is massive yeah it is uh we've been approached for quite some time now george by the largest brands largest lps largest tech companies it's something that we wanted to wait for the right time and obviously when i looked at uh you know daniel and what he was doing with chiaro we wanted to launch here first with one of the best performing companies in the cannabis market for sure born on when we looked at the execution of their senior management team uh it's quite something i mean if you know people spend some time doing some due diligence around who's involved with the company that's extremely extremely impressive and we're going to be moving very quickly jordan as you'll see in the cannabis space uh it's completely ripe for disruption for phobia uh dan why don't go back want to come back to you clearly you're growing m a is a big part because you just announced uh that that that acquisition that was that was fantastic and congratulations how much comfort does this deal does this agreement with folby this relationship fulby bring you uh knowing now you can go forward with more m a and not have to worry about all that all those interoperability issues that come with you know because acquisitions are great until someone has to make them work how much comfort does this give you now to just go on a a growth a real growth cycle here so this this is a great question george this is our first major acquisition of this many stores and and and we run formal project management here as as any good tech retailers should uh and looking at our plan and everything everything that's that takes into consideration it it's it's i mean man it's just having the foresight and the ability to go in so for example the hemisphere stores do run different platforms than we do you know i mean so we're not able to pull data from that we're not able to kind of bridge that data in the short term we actually have to have to do a cut period you know i just careful what i say here but there's a little cut period to do transition on the systems where you have to actually actually shut down some systems and stuff like that and so it says downtime so every acquisition will have a little bit of downtime as most companies will when you're running two systems this should allow us to to really minimize if not eliminate that downtime and get that data that we and just to analyze the data so we're pulling data out of a system that we don't even operate right now so be able to take that data organize it into our system have phobia go and plug in and bring it right in so we can see what's happening even the historic the amount of time and resources it saves you is i i again what i'm seeing is phenomenal so i was about to add to that i was about to ask you that if you could contextualize for everybody you know how much time and resource since you said it time and resources you're saving that otherwise if fulby wasn't around looks like it would have been a really difficult task to get done i i'd say rob can quantify maybe more than i can but i would say just the sheer cut time of transition like just the sheer downtime that you could avoid is one thing it's just like continuity of the business getting the data i can't even quantify you know how much can be learned from the insights of the data that you're pulling in because any other company that doesn't have the aggregator and the organization that data you will never gain those insights but connecting all those things our system to pulling them in i i don't even know how much i could quantify it um but it's massive i mean rob in your experience maybe you could you could speak to that uh about how how much is actually there how much do you actually you know this scope of what we're looking at here how much of a lifesaver is phobia yeah the i mean the challenge for any any you know acquisition i mean we've done several here at phobia and last year as well and you've got um multiple different you know data touch points across all of your banners now in in daniel's case um you know we provided interoperability real-time connectivity real-time ingestion and output you know the challenge for the retailers george and for those at home always is you know they've got data is danny knows they've got data coming out of their yin yang but it's how do we actually leverage and monetize that how do we create you know actual strategies to provide a better digital uh contextual experience for the shoppers how do we leverage the known user to maximize wallet share and spend yes when you look at a company with the growth trajectories chiaro and you know the targets from revenue you know i i'm willing to bet that from what we're able to provide to that we even see an you know additional 10 percent on top of that just simply with the efficiencies of real-time interoperable data connectivity 10 revenue top line or ebitda yeah 10 i mean that's kind of the standard what we see you know in our what we've seen across the board is 10 is kind of the minimum baseline that's just streamlining the operation from a data connectivity perspective once we start to implement all the strategies around data monetization um it's extremely valuable so i mean you know 10 20 is simply not unattainable to torch and raw and dan in retail of anything a 10 or 20 percent improvement is massive it's uh i mean help people understand at home how big that and by the way want to make sure for everyone home neither rob or dan are projecting you know what this is going to do uh you know the the company kiara's already put out their expectations for about 43 million in rev 13.7 gross so but theoretically speaking dan if if phobia is able to deliver that you know how big is that to any retailer have that kind of improvement to the to their operations i i'd say in a sense given what i mean i i think i think the cost of of of what we're doing here is nominal compared to that'll have i that'll hit right to the bottom line essentially like all the stuff you're saving on the top when you're running it uh you're going to see it on the bottom line i mean it's massive for retailers we run tight margins in competitive environments it's it's it's massive it'll you'll definitely see an impact on the bottom line of those savings because we're talking tech and efficiencies here by the way gents uh clarification for me and made for some people at home uh does this also mean that folby devices will be going into all the locations or is this or is this all the data being shot back to a data warehouse and then phobia deals with it how how's this going to look from an operational point of view well we'll do whatever we need to do to once we start to look at the new acquisitions all the various data touch points george whether it's phobia devices or apis or whatever we need to ingest everything to the data warehouse we'll do whatever it takes and we have all the tools in the box so we're not concerned about that you know i think one of the key points too that we should mention is the value here comes from understanding your customer ultimately right everyone especially in the retail and daniel and his team with the traditional retail background they have as well on building up franchise models like they are here successfully doing it's always about understanding the customer right everyone's moving towards personalization as you'll start to hear over and over all cpgs all retailers you know daniel's going to have the leverage and capabilities of that right out of the gate here so i think it's something that provides tremendous value to their organization from a top level but more importantly from the shopping experience which they already have is second to none this simply enhances that to create further wall insurance spend for their known users and converting unknown to known which is the greatest challenge around acquisition and retention that that's where the data will leverage to focus to monetize that aspect dan is this some of the best money you've ever spent given the roi that you uh that you generally are going to be expecting from this you know how can how can it not be i mean if anyone in business nowadays if you're not thinking that your business needs to be a data driven decision business like data is the goal data is your nervous system i just don't know you know i kind of toy around with saying if any company nowadays if you're not a data company if you're not a if that's not your base if that's not where you live it's going to be very challenging for you you know and then what phobia again i'll say it again i've never seen the correlation of data that i've seen on the system before and then obviously proof to phobia and and congrats to rob getting big company names in right the massive you know i mean and almost you know grateful to be the first canvas company to be able to be engaged with this system you know we're a new industry we don't have we have very inferior data organization collection and and rob's saying beyond that that attribution and unknown to known massive massive you know getting cannabis space retail taylor taylor's even getting not getting to know your customer and getting the information on the rec side it's not medical we don't need their name we don't need their phone number we don't need all this stuff so getting to know our customer and then attributing and just getting to know our market that's where we want to be we consider ourselves you know one of our one of our retail kind of kind of purposes is the most empathetic company how do you be empathetic you got to know your customer how do you know your customer you know your customer through data because at the end of the day you're giving them exactly what they want when they want how they want it like that is it that is our our world nowadays and as as it should be we have the ability to do that we're not the guest anymore we can just deliver exactly what someone wants and fantastic insight and by the way and it's great that you congratulate rob but i think don't sell yourself short either congratulations to you guys building a really powerful cannabis retailer almost coast to coast with more to come congratulations guys to both of you on joining forces together to deliver uh great efficiencies it's going to be a great canadian you know tech joint venture starter i know it's not joint venture videos it's a great tech partnership and uh and looking forward to what you guys could be able to deliver and have your back on maybe dan a couple months two three months when you've gotta appreciate a real chance to see the impact and and have you both back on to talk about it absolutely because you asked me some questions there that we're gonna we're gonna have some look backs and see exactly what it did uh so i'm really excited to see that rob you up to the challenge couple of months you have to we're gonna have to give a look back and see if you're able to deliver any concerns that you guys can be able to live up to the challenge george now i'm pretty confident i know you are i don't think i touched on on the data sales and stuff so i'm very confident so thank you thanks guys much appreciated we know you're both busy the fact you take the time out like this to talk to everybody is uh is great to provide that contextual info for everybody at home you've been watching you've been listening by podcast to both rob anson and daniel petrov rob of course from phobia uh daniel from chiara holdings start your due diligence if you've just discovered the other company because they're gonna be some cross over here get to the profile page on the goricom and then from there link over the websites to your deep dive due diligence thanks for joining us have a great day see you next time hey guys this video is 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Channel: Fobi

Views: 4,119

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: fobi, fobi inc, fobi ai

Id: Iwxq75EX2pc

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021