Japan’s digital marketing startup Showcase Gig fundraises from Loyalty Marketing

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This is the abridged version of our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based digital marketing startup Showcase Gig, the startup behind ‘O:der’ (apparently pronounced ‘order’), announced on Tuesday that it has fundraised an undisclosed sum of investment from Japan’s largest reward program operator Loyalty Marketing.

Since its launch back in July, the startup has been providing a suite of CRM solutions for small-sized retailers, comprising of two iOS apps, one for consumers and the other for merchants. The consumer app has a mobile wallet feature that enables payment by credit card prior to picking up a product at the shop.

Check out the video below to see how it works.

Loyalty Marketing provides a reward and loyalty program called Ponta and gives over 60 million consumers in Japan discounts or rewards at about 22,500 retail stores from 103 brands. The company collects an enormous amount of consumer behavior data using the reward platform and helps brands roll out their better marketing efforts.

Since before the funding at this time, Showcase Gig and Loyalty Marketing have been working together in developing a gamification app called Ponta Time. In addition, the ‘O:der’ app has adopted a payment gateway service from Loyalty Marketing for enabling users to pay on mobile.

Showcase Gig unveiled that they have surpassed over 100 merchants using their app this month. They primarily target female consumers in their 30s, but they think their user demographics will become more diverse as they get more various merchants. In order to better understand market needs, the company will need to learn more about consumer behaviors to keep providing appropriate services.

Showcase Gig’s CEO Takefumi Nitta told us Loyalty Marketing’s Ponta platform can collect detailed consumer profiles as well as typical sales records, allowing them to markedly define the demographics of different behavioral types of consumers. The two companies will work closely to develop a smash-hit service in the O2O (online-to-offline) space.