Qples gives CPG brands a uniquely streamlined way to create, deliver, and measure the impact of coupon campaigns. Besides helping brands shave weeks of time and significant costs off the process of creating, delivering, and redeeming coupon promotions, Qples’s solution goes beyond couponing to capture 1st party customer data - presenting powerful synergies with Fobi’s technologies in the retail data and loyalty marketing space.
On this week’s episode, we talk to Qples President Eddy Watson about what Qples does, how Universal Digital Coupons work, and why its technology is a quantum leap for consumer brands delivering over $200 billion in discount offers and promotions each year.
After announcing our planned acquisition of Qples, many of Fobi’s followers and fans are eager to know more about Qples, as well as the opportunities and capabilities this creates for Fobi going forward.
Listen to Fobi Insider - Episode 18: The Qples Story
The following is a transcript of the conversation between Fobi Marketing Director Devon Seidel and Qples President Eddy Watson.
Fobi Marketing Director Devon Seidel: Welcome back to the Fobi Insider podcast. Our guest today is Eddy Watson, president of Qples. Fobi has signed an LOI to acquire Qples, an online coupon and advertising platform. And, welcome to the show today, Eddy.
Qples President Eddy Watson: Hi. I'm excited to be here.
Devon: I know we have a lot to talk about today with the new acquisition and I'm sure our listeners are eager to learn more about Qples, all the things that your team is working on and what this acquisition actually means for the company moving forward. First, though, let's get to know you a little bit more. What did you do before you started at Qples?
Eddy: I have a pretty long and winding job history. So, I started in college. I was going to be a photographer and that led into graphic design, which led into web design, which led to us creating the agency that we were before we were Qples. And so, it's just a natural nice little progression in between all of those. And then, if you want to get wild and crazy, I was bartender in college and things like that. But that's long time ago.
Devon: Awesome. So, what was that agency before Qples, then?
Eddy: So, the team that created Qples originally was an agency called Thunder Duck and we did all the normal stuff that an agency would do. Graphic design, web design.
We also had a pretty strong tech team and so we did a lot of Facebook apps and things like that when they first started and that's how we ended up becoming Qples, is we had to run a coupon inside of a Facebook account for a brand and we didn't know how to do it, so we went and talked to a coupon company and then had a very unpleasant experience with it and said: we'll just figure this out on our own so that we can run coupons for our brands. And, it kind of took over from there and we, within six months, had re-incorporated and become Qples all the time.
Devon: So, you weren't always into couponing. You weren't one of those extreme couponers before.
Eddy: No. No. No. Very much the opposite. We had to learn couponing from the ground up and we really, you know, didn't know what we didn't know, and so, that helped us a lot because as we were building things we just built it the way we figured it should be and we found out later on that it's wildly different than the rest of the coupon industry usually does things.
Devon: That's great. So, let's... Let's give our listeners a kind of a little bit tidbit. What is Qples actually?
Eddy: So, Qples is a manufacturer digital coupon company. We specialize in SaaS based approach for the brands, which is different than everybody else. So, our goal is to see how easy can we make this process of building and distributing a coupon for the brand, along with how easy can we make it for the consumer. But everything is built around the consumer experience and the user experience, so we want them to be able to build a coupon in 15 minutes and launch it out as opposed to two to three days or even a couple of weeks, which is kind of common in our industry.
Devon: And, you mentioned before that when your team started, you didn't know what it was like working with coupons. So, now that you do know, what does the coupon technology landscape look like currently?
Eddy: It's a little outdated. There's a lot of very large legacy companies and things that have done things in a certain way that needed to be disrupted very, very much. Things are not as smooth as they can be and that's one of the reasons why you don't see mobile manufacturer coupons right now, because this industry moves incredibly slow. But hopefully as we're moving forward and... Not even hopefully. As we're moving forward with the new universal digital stuff that's just now coming out, the entire industry is going to change. Fraud will basically disappear. Things will happen completely on your phone the entire time and that'll make it much easier for a brand to distribute and get a coupon directly to the right consumer at that time.
Devon: And, we'll get in a little bit later to how Qples actually works, but can you kind of explain to me what a normal process would be using... Using a coupon nowadays if I'm not using Qples?
Eddy: Yeah. So, normally if you're not using Qples, you would contact your coupon provider, pass over all of your assets to have that done. They would then take it and go behind the scenes and do all the really difficult magic stuff like typing in the information that you have, putting the graphics and everything in, and then they would eventually respond back to you with a proof of your coupon that you could then take, get approved, and go. Then, at that point, they'll distribute either a link or the physical coupon, however you're going to be distributing it, and you can send it out.
All said, that process usually takes one to two weeks because there's lots of physically moving assets around back and forth and we prefer to make that a much faster process, so our software allows the brands to do all that on their own. Instead of them having to hand that information over to us, they can actually just fill it in to their account and immediately get their print preview or their preview of the digital coupon and if they have it approved by their clearinghouse immediately, they could launch literally within about 15 minutes.
Devon: That's awesome. And, I mean, to think about too, large scale retailers or large scale CPGs probably have a team that are used to doing these. They have lots of different locations. They kind of have a good foundation in that. But the scalability of coupons for everyone in the industry probably isn't that easy.
Eddy: Agreed. Very much. The scalability is really the best part about what we do. We can take a brand that has never ran a single coupon and doesn't understand anything and train them how to run a coupon and have it up and running on their own in about an hour. And, if they're a large scale company that has a big process, we can either let them use our system directly outside out of the box and go forth and run, and they typically are very happy.
And then, we can also integrate directly into their platforms as well to give them an easier way to process coupons because some larger brands may have not only their whole team that handles coupons. They may have an entire internal process that they have to go through before they can get a coupon approved. And, we can do some pretty heavy integrations that way to make it easier on them.
Devon: And, Qples is changing that. So, walk me kind of through the steps of what it would be like to create a coupon and then launch it.
Eddy: Okay. Awesome. So, with Qples, it's... It's really incredibly simple. There's a simple form field that they fill out in their account and once they filled in the information, we are able to take all the coupon assets and narrow those down to two specific images as opposed to about 15 that it takes for some of our competitors, and they can use those same two images, whether it's a print coupon or a mobile coupon. And then, we store all of that information inside their account as well, so the next time they build a coupon, they don't have to reload images. They can actually access their library of stuff and rebuild it again.
And, we also them to edit and change the coupon at any point in time, even if it's live, because in the digital age, things change rapidly. You may all of a sudden go on sale in store and you don't want a digital coupon that can be stacked on top of that to be there, so they can easily go into our platform, pause a campaign, reactivate it when they need to. And then, we give them as many tracking options as we possibly can.
So, they can integrate their own third party tracking analytics if they have floodlight tags, spotlight tags, anything like that that they're doing. We can integrate those. We also allow them to create multiple links to the same coupon so that they can track. So, if they want to place a coupon on Facebook, on their website, in their newsletter, at the same time, we can do that. We can track all that information and then provide it back to them individually down to who it was that redeemed the coupon or clipped the coupon or printed the coupon.
Devon: That's awesome. And, I'm sure... I'm sure a lot of people who are listening are thinking, "That sounds so technical and there's so many different things to do." Because, usually as a consumer, all we're used to doing is seeing, "Oh, there is a coupon in the flyer. I'm going to cut that out, scan it." Or, sometimes it's just I'm up at the register. They're like, "This is on sale. Do you want us to scan the coupon?". But there are so many pieces that go in behind it and also, like you had mentioned before, the fraud around using double coupons and then being able to have digital but also physical at the same time and matching those so you can't use them twice, right?
Eddy: Exactly. And, as we move forward into the new digital stuff, that's where all of the crazy fraud comes out. Every coupon is completely serialized and validated on scan at the register, so the moment that coupon is issued to the consumer, it's a one time use coupon. So, if they screenshot it, try to do anything else, it doesn't work multiple times. They forward it on to their friends, it doesn't work. And, it also allows for that instant redemption or permission to come back to the company, which typically takes six weeks right now in the current industry. But the new digital stuff drops it to about a minute.
Devon: That's great. So, there's two types of coupons that Qples offers. So, there is the print at home and the universal digital. What...? Let's... Let's start talking about the universal digital coupon because I think it ties in nicely with what we're talking about with digital right now. So, what is a universal digital coupon?
Eddy: So, on its face, universal digital is the next generation of all couponing in the industry. Every coupon that is... Whether it's print at home, physically printed, anything like that in the industry right now, is all done under one specific barcode style. Universal digital basically breaks that apart and does it in a completely different way. The reason that fraud exists in the current industry is because the barcode is static. All the information for the coupon, the discount, how much money it's off, what company it's going to, all that has to fit inside the barcode information and it's only 70 digits worth of space.
But universal digital destroys that whole process and we say, "You know what? The barcode is no longer the end all be all for everything. It is actually just a lookup code." So, we serialize and give a unique ID and the moment that is scanned at the register, the register calls out to The Coupon Bureau's databases and all the information that we've loaded for that coupon is then dumped back down. So, instead of being limited to 70 digits, we basically have no limitations whatsoever. So, if we want to put multiple companies inside one coupon or thousands of different products inside that coupon individually, we can do that.
And then, we can also digitally change things whenever we need to. So, if they need to adjust it, the barcode doesn't matter. They can change things and the moment the coupon is scanned, it gets the latest version of everything that's going on.
Devon: And, we had previously had Brandi Johnson of The Coupon Bureau on another episode of the podcast and we were talking a lot about the coupon industry and the new 8112 barcode format. Is that being applied here as well?
Eddy: Exactly. That's the... That's exactly what we're using. So, we are integrated directly with The Coupon Bureau as much as we possibly can be so that we can utilize all of the new features that are coming out.
Devon: That's awesome. And, of course, we're always cautious about security and data privacy as well, too, especially here at Fobi. We're working here with organizations such as Sovrin's blockchain. How does the security work with a universal digital coupon? I know you had talked a little bit about how there's fraud protection around it. Is there other security measures around that as well, too?
Eddy: There are, but at that point, the security comes down to each individual coupon provider handling that. The Bureau handles locking down the coupon and helping them make sure that each one that's sent out is completely unique and only redeemable one time. But it would be on Qples at that point to make sure that we're validating that it's a real person that's getting the coupon, that it's not being passed on to other people. And then, also, if we are collecting user data, we need to make sure that we have clear policies stating how that data is used and then following compliance things for, like, the California Consumer Protection Act as well. So, we have to make sure that we have processes to be able to remove consumer data if we need to.
Devon: Is there anyone else out there currently having to deal with that, or is Qples kind of at the forefront - kind of paving the way in how do we create the security around this?
Eddy: There's a few other companies that are starting to inch their way into the universal digital processes. None of them are as integrated as Qples is at this point. But it's still going to be one of those things that will be an evolution because this is such a new process. The first beta tests are just now starting, so this is a perfect time because we can not only influence what this process looks like in the future, but we can have time to make sure that by the time this goes completely universal to where it's available in every store, we've already built our processes and done everything so we're already hitting the ground running.
Devon: So, we're looking at having this in every store. We're not quite there yet. Where can a consumer currently go to redeem a universal coupon?
Eddy: So, currently there's a very limited number of stores. There's Elden's, which is an individual chain in Minnesota, I think. And then, there is also Lowe's Markets, which is a chain of about 120-something stores spread throughout the Southwest and mainly Texas, Arizona, New Mexico. Those just happen to be the first ones to go live. There are also dozens of other large chains in the U.S. that are actively integrating and doing things. It looks like over the next five to six months is where we'll see the biggest change in how that goes through. Thankfully... Or, not thankfully, COVID slowed everything down last year and retailers are just now starting to unlock their POS systems to allow new integrations to go. But they will also go back into code lockdown starting around October and they won't do more integrations until January because during the holiday season, they take a break and...
But Q1 is where we're expecting massive, massive amounts of integrations and things to go live and every time one goes live, we don't have to do a different change on our end. The Coupon Bureau handles that. So, the moment they turn a new one live, we just have access to a whole new store that we can send coupons to.
Devon: We've talked a lot of times on the podcast of how the pandemic has been a catalyst for so many different things in technology and business for different industries. How have you felt that the either the CPGs are responding to this catalyst of the pandemic?
Eddy: There was definitive changes. We did hear from a significant amount of them that they had to change not only the way they did business, but had to put things on pause. So, we were expecting a larger drop-off last year than we actually experienced. But it's starting to ramp back up. The biggest thing that we hear is everybody makes sure that they mention with universal digital and the ability to do something digital, you can go contactless. And, that's the... That's the number one thing I've heard. I don't think we ever heard it before at all. But now you hear it in almost every pitch across anywhere. Is it contactless? Is it contactless? And, thankfully, universal digital is.
Devon: Yeah. And, I know, like, so many things are moving that way and everything that we're doing with engagement on the Fobi side, too, is focused on contactless, so that's why this is such a great fit with that. So, let's talk about scale now. What are you at Qples doing to increase the scale of this?
Eddy: So, the number one thing that we can do is convert clients over. So, it's a two-pronged approach. Everything starts with the CPG. They drive everything that goes in this entire industry. However, the retailers are the ones that we have to have the integration for. CPGs are, across the board, overly excited about this process and have been clamoring for it for basically the entire time that I've been doing couponing and the retailers are the slow movers in this space and they will convert over. They will do things. It's just never going to be as fast as we would prefer it to be.
And so, TCB is responsible for handling the retailers. It will be Qples' responsibility to drive more brands that are doing it, and it works both ways. It's kind of a chicken and egg thing. The CPGs want to know which retailers they're in and the retailers want to know what coupons are going to be available. And so, we push on our side and they push on their side, and hopefully we meet somewhere in the middle.
Devon: Let's move over a little bit to now talking about the CPGs still. So, a CPG is a consumer packaged good. So, they're able to redeem their manufacturer level digital coupons at any digital platform and track performance. How does this work? So, we're talking about kind of tracking of the performance side. How...? How are those insights generated and what are kind of the benefits to the CPGs?
Eddy: So, across the board when it comes to couponing, typically the CPGs get one thing when they run a coupon campaign. They find out how many coupon prints or clips they've got. And, that kind of where it ends. And so, they don't gain hardly any information about what's going on. But Qples wants to make sure that we're giving the CPGs as much information as possible so that they can make an educated decision on not only this current program, but ones moving forward, and grow their own CRMs in the future.
So, we go ahead and authenticate every consumer that comes through and we don't care if that's authentication through us or through the brand. We're happy either way. But we want to make sure that there's some sort of authentication to be able to make sure it's going to a legitimate consumer and not a bot or something like that. So, we don't use IP addresses, for example, as authentication because there's inherent issues with those, especially if we move to mobile devices. It's even harder to track and do things with that.
So, we use either a verified phone number, an email address, or a third party authentication. And so, third party authentications would a lot of times be clients' email database or if they're doing something that they're gathering the consumer data for specifically and they don't want to pass that information to us, we can tokenize all those things using an API and still track all that stuff and provide it back to the brand.
Some of the items that we provide automatically are going to be base things that we can pull off. So, they will get IP address, ZIP code, city, state, all that information, provided back to them, and then we can go all the way down to the unique user level and say, "Eddy at Qples.com bought this product, redeemed it here. He did it at this store and this information." And, we can get them all those things back to the brand so that they can make an educated decision or see if their stuff actually works the way it should be.
Devon: So, it's giving them more analytics that they've probably been begging to have before, been going to different sources to try and collect, and now they can actually just get it directly as it's happening, right from... Right from Qples.
Eddy: Exactly. And, that's one of the reasons why we're excited about Fobi, because we do handle analytics and we do have some data and stuff like that, but that's not necessarily our strongest point, and that is exactly what Fobi does. So, we're super excited to see how, as we move forward, Fobi can help us supercharge those things so we can provide not good reports, but great reports.
Devon: And, not only just tying redemption, but also tying it to basket composition and [inaudible 00:20:20] similar audiences and how people are shopping, to provide that full report as, yes, I provided this coupon. Yes, this is how many times it got redeemed. But how is it selling? What is it selling with? How many times is somebody purchasing this on sale with this other item?
Eddy: Exactly. And, we view the data that you guys get from the actual purchases and things like that along with the data that we get in two separate ways. So, you guys have the actual purchase data and what the consumer physically did with that stuff. We have the intent data. And so, they may not use that coupon but they did interact, they did do something and choose to get something from that brand. And so, there was an intention there, but we can tie that back to what made this consumer engage and be interested and want to do something with it and then what made them drop off and no longer actually go through and complete that purchase.
And so, there's things that we can do moving forward where we can then go back and re-incentivize those consumers that didn't purchase with something else. Maybe it's an additional offer, a higher value offer, or a product offering that's based off of their purchase history that is more useful to them. But there's options there that open up wildly when we can combine all that data together.
Devon: We've talked a lot about the digital side, but Qples also has the print at home. So, what are you doing...? Or, first of all, what is print at home?
Eddy: So, print at home is exactly what it sounds. It forces the consumer... In order for them to get the coupon, they have to print it out. Typically, they print it at home. I mean, they don't necessarily have to. It could be on their work computer or, surprisingly, there's still people that go to a library and print out coupons.
But historically, print at home was very revolutionary because it was the first way that you could take something from a digital medium and physically get it to a consumer so that they could go in the store. It's also the only way that a brand can take a coupon and use it to gain their own insights. Historically, they... They send out a print coupon. It's physically mailed out. They don't really know who it went to or gain any specific data around those things. And, even with all digital options like clip to cart and things like that, they again don't gain any consumer data and they can't put it on their own or their own hosted sites.
So, we focus a lot of times on those because the brands have a lot of specific things that they want to use that coupon for and we try to encourage them to not only use it just to issue a discount, but to use it as a tool to get something else. So, if they're running a sweepstakes or something like that, you know what? You can drive a lot more trial into your sweepstakes if you issue a coupon to every single person that signs up. Now, you're not only getting a chance to win something big but you get something immediate as well.
You could also use it for consumer support. So, every brand that I've ever talked to has some support team that has to deal with a customer that either had a bad experience or had a problem with their product. And, right now, their process is they physically mail out a coupon unless they're using Qples. They can actually generate a one time consumer link on any coupon that they have and send it out, and that consumer can print a coupon out and, you know, have an easier time and an easier day and move on.
And, as universal digital unveils, you'll see higher value coupons start to come in play and free product coupons will come into play and sampling will become a much more easy thing to do in a digital medium versus having to do it with a physical component.
Devon: You talked a lot about the benefits of digital. What are those benefits of digital that you've also carried over to the print at home and kind of changing the landscape of bringing in a physical coupon?
Eddy: So, what we do with print at home... Everything does have to end with a print, but we can take that coupon and do a lot of different things. So, all the features that we have in universal digital, we also have inside of print at home, just not as much security and it doesn't... And, you have to print it out. But some of the really great benefits that we have that are unique to us are, one, we have an integration directly with Destini store locators.
If you're not familiar with them, they're a really, really awesome store locator and they use Nielsen and SPINS data to generate and populate the store locations for their client. We can integrate directly in with that and so when a consumer clicks to print, we'll ping their Destini store locator in real time and present underneath the coupon six closest locations for them to go redeem that coupon for the individual products that they selected.
We also include basic stuff like geo gating, age gating. They can build out custom form fills and gain any additional consumer data that they want. And, obviously, the consumer support side is what's a big thing for a lot of the brands, is creating those individualized customer support links that they can use for tracking and to help a disgruntled consumer.
Devon: Can you touch on age gating and geo gating a little bit more? Because I think that's a really good competitive edge to what Qples offers.
Eddy: So, they get confused a lot of times with geo fencing or with geo targeting and age targeting. These are really geared more towards the alcohol, pharmaceutical, tobacco, things like that, where we have to force the consumer to tell us their age and their location before we can present the coupon. And so, this is actually a pop up. We ask the consumer directly. You know, you must enter your age in order to get the coupon and that may be 13 years old, 18 years old or 21 years old, depending on what it is.
And then, obviously, geo gating comes into play especially for alcohol because the U.S. has ridiculous alcohol laws and each state has its own. So, in California, you're allowed to get a coupon immediately and redeem it at the store. In Texas, you're not allowed to have any alcohol coupons whatsoever. And, in some states, you can only do a mail in rebate. So, we have to be able to choose from that and then direct it in the correct way [to do] those things.
Devon: And, these gating restrictions are so important because as everything starts to move more digital, we have this whole industry, such as liquor, cannabis, all these different industries that aren't able to play or compete at the same level as something such as, like, a shampoo brand or something.
Eddy: Exactly. The alcohol, pharmaceuticals all have their own unique weird little laws that we have to play within, and so, we've built all these pieces in there to make it so if a brand does want to do that, it's not too difficult for them to engage and do those things.
Devon: And, looking at the retailer side now. So, if I come with either my print at home or my digital coupon, does the retailer actually need to update their infrastructure to host any of these?
Eddy: For print at home, no. It's 99.99% across every store in the United States. If you print a coupon out and as long as your product's sold there, you can redeem that coupon there. Universal digital does require it the first time they set up and that's just the integration to be able to call out to The Coupon Bureau's databases and stuff to validate. But once a coupon... Or, retailer is integrated with The Coupon Bureau, they don't have to do anything when we set up a coupon. We create the coupon. We don't have to let the retailers know. We don't have to do any of that. All they have to do is walk in and show their phone and the scanning takes care of all the validation.
Devon: And, are the benefits of a universal digital coupon kind of outweighing the friction of a retailer maybe wanting to do that process?
Eddy: Yes, they are. Most of the time that we're... Most of the stuff that I'm hearing... And, again, some of this is not Qples' responsibility, so it's hard for me to go too crazy into it. But typically, the fraud aspect of everything that goes along with traditional coupons, whether it's print at home, print or anything like that, is completely overweighed by the fact that they can now set up coupons. They don't have to worry about physically mailing coupons around to get them validated. They don't have to wait weeks and weeks and weeks to get paid back for a coupon that they issue a discount for and they don't have to worry about all those fraud pieces. And so, it gives them a much easier solution to a problem that they have.
Devon: And, Eddy, tell me now about the Grocery Coupon Network. How is this related to Qples and its mobile application as well?
Eddy: So, Grocery Coupon Network is the consumer-facing version of Qples. This is where we host additional coupons for the brands so they can place any of their coupons inside our gallery and gain additional coverage without having to go and promote it themselves. And, the GCN app is the next generation of all of that. So, inside the Grocery Coupon Network app, they can do basic things like store coupons that they've saved and view new coupons that they might not have seen before and others as well.
But they can also do some really awesome things that are now available using 8112. And, the number one thing is going to be bundling. So, the goal here is how can we speed up lane time and not slow it down? If you've ever been stuck with a couponer in front of you and they've got their giant coupon book and they're digging through trying to find which coupon they want to use, we don't want to create that same problem with a smartphone, where they have to find a coupon, scan it, then swipe and look through for the other one and scan it.
So, we have what we call a master barcode and at any point in time when you're ready to redeem your coupons, you hit "generate your master barcode." We'll take every universal digital coupon that you've saved and combine those into one barcode and you scan that barcode and walk out. Any coupons that are applicable immediately receive the discount. All the ones that weren't applicable stay in your account to be used at another time.
Devon: And, how is this changing the way that customers are finding coupons?
Eddy: Right now, it's really hard to find manufacturer coupons inside an app, and so, this will be the first round that it's happened with. But again, this is something that's so new. We actually just launched it about three weeks ago, so we haven't even made an official announcement until the LOI went out with Fobi. So, that was actually a really fun thing to be able to see it get announced at the exact same time as the LOI.
Devon: Yeah, and I'm super excited about it. I was reading through all the information about it and it looks super cool and so intuitive for the user. Like you said, the bundling, it's perfect. If I have a whole bunch of things, I don't have to worry about having either separate versions or separate digital coupons. It's one barcode. I scan it. I'm good to go. And, I don't... I don't have that embarrassment of looking like I'm a super couponer, but I can still use coupons.
Eddy: Exactly. And, there's some really great next generation things that will be coming out. So, I know that The Coupon Bureau is working as well on some ways to standardize data across all providers and I don't know exactly how that process is going to look, but when they do, the goal is we don't want somebody to have to have four different coupon providers' apps or other things available.
And so, there's ways that we can standardize this data and pass it along all together so that if I have coupons from three other providers, I can view those inside my GCN app as well and then bundle those together. And so, now, the consumer really gets the choice of which app experience is the best for them or which mobile wallet experience is the best for them. And, the goal is to have options across the board because every time a consumer says they like that app the best, there's going to be another one that says I don't like apps and I want a mobile wallet. Or, I don't want to download any of those things and I want to do this all inside my browser.
And so, we need to give them as many options as possible, and that's another reason why we're excited, because Qples is a small team and we had to make a choice. Do we do a wallet or do we do an app? And so, we chose app, and thankfully, that works out perfectly because you guys have a wallet so we can integrate those together and now be the only ones that offer both.
Devon: And, that's something too that is right on the forefront and it's something that we're always looking to do and what we're doing with promotions and targeted customer, ads and everything through the wallet pass as well for brands and CPGs. And, this is just the perfect fit because now it's just another channel to deliver those coupons, like you'd said before. So, that's a great integration and that one, I think, is very clear. Are there any other exciting integrations between Fobi and Qples that you're looking at?
Eddy: Yeah. Basically every product that you guys have, we're looking to find a way to do it. So, obviously our brands can do a lot of things with our current stuff, but they can't build their own audiences unless they have an audience. And, we're looking to find ways that we can help them build an audience and then go market to that audience.
And so, all the integrations and all the ways that Fobi is gathering and building those consumer databases, I can't wait to be able to give that as an option for the brand because it's hard for them to go and reach 10, 20,000 people, maybe 100,000 or a million people, if they don't go pay a huge amount of money for a traditional media buy, which is going to be very expensive and not really produce many results. But if we have actual, tangible consumers that we can actually reach out to, that's infinite gold, basically, for the root... For the brands, and they'll be excited about that every single day of the week.
Devon: Awesome. And, for our last question today, what is something that you're currently working on or your team's working on that you're really excited about right now?
Eddy: We're most excited right now about what we call Qples 4.0. So, 4.0 is the latest version of our entire platform. It's the one that's been demoed to the Fobi team and it is, again, just as new as our app. We re-created our entire platform, streamlined everything with the latest technology that we could get a hold of and did the app all at once. And so, we're actually just now going to begin the process of transitioning all of our legacy clients from the previous 3.0 platform to the 4.0 platform, and the differences are night and day. The speed times are probably 100 to 200 times faster than the previous versions. Everything happens much cleaner and it's a much smoother interface, which is really saying something because we were already the fastest interface in the coupon industry before. But we actually found a way to combine those all together.
And, the last part is our new dual offers, which nobody in the industry is doing. Everybody says, "Great. Print at home's gone. Let's move to digital." But digital's not quite here yet and so it seems rude to throw away a completely functioning process, and brands are going to be hesitant at the very beginning to step in if there's only available for to be able... Or, if they're only able to do digital in a certain few amount of stores. So, we combined the traditional 8110 coupons that are print at home along with the new digital and we can present both to the consumer at the same time. And, in effect, the consumer can say print this coupon, redeem it anywhere those products sold, or clip it and it can go be redeemed at any of these available retailers.
And then, now we have a transition time so that brands can step into digital and not feel like they're eliminating all the retailers that aren't there yet. But they can start going and gearing towards digital, which does two things. One, it gets more brands doing digital, which is good for the retailers to see and helps spread digital. And, it also gets them comfortable doing things without having to jump in and do [inaudible 00:35:20] completely new process that eliminates their old traditional stuff that they're used to.
Devon: That's such a great strategy to transition between the two. Thank you so much for your time.
Eddy: Thank you.
Devon: [Thank you] for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk with me today, Eddy. We're very excited to have Qples join the Fobi brand and I'm sure we'll have lots more to talk about soon as we release really exciting products and do great things together.
Eddy: Awesome. It was great. I'm very excited. We're... Our entire team is over the moon excited to come join you guys.
Devon: Awesome. Thanks, Eddy. And, to our listeners, we'll be back soon with another episode.
Eddy: Awesome. That was great. Thank you so much.
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