CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Planet 13 Holdings: Doing things “Vegas style” fuels the growth at this one-of-a-kind cannabis company

Media coverage of the cannabis sector these days would lead you to think that nobody in the industry makes any money, yet nothing could be further from the truth. There are many profitable companies out there, and others a stone’s throw away.

One of those companies is Las Vegas–based Planet 13 Holdings (CSE:PLTH), whose retail footprint is truly beyond compare. But more on that in just a moment.

What makes Planet 13 successful in its Nevada home market is simple: vertical integration and high visibility. This means the company can grow its own cannabis and make its own products for the wholesale, medical and retail markets. It sells its popular brands at its wholly owned store in Las Vegas, as well as at dispensaries owned by others.

The company currently has three cultivation sites, plus three production facilities to make edibles and other products. But its biggest claim to fame is the SuperStore dispensary, the Planet 13 Cannabis Entertainment Complex located not far from the famous Las Vegas Strip.

At 112,000 square feet, the SuperStore is the biggest cannabis store in the world, attracting 1 million visitors and generating US$63 million in revenue in 2019. That represents about one in 10 cannabis sales in the state. Plans call for opening a second Las Vegas dispensary, as well as for launching Planet 13’s first retail location in California, in the first half of 2021.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic cut into SuperStore sales during springtime, the top line has since enjoyed a steady rebound. For the third quarter, which ended September 30, revenue is expected to be $22.8 million, representing a 110% increase over the previous quarter.

Public Entrepreneur discussed the state of operations, effects from COVID-19 and growth plans with Planet 13 Co-Chief Executive Officer Bob Groesbeck.

Operating the largest cannabis retail store in the world, Planet 13 is a barometer on how the cannabis market is doing. Talk to us about retail sales and cultivation.

Business has been fantastic despite COVID-19 reducing tourist traffic to Las Vegas. We pre-released our third-quarter revenue number, and it is the highest in our company’s history.

Growth this quarter reflects improvements at the SuperStore, which drove a higher ticket; improvement in our delivery services, which increased our share of local cannabis revenue; and growth on the wholesale side of the business.

How did the COVID-19 lockdown affect sales, and what have you seen since?

It had a dramatic effect on our business in Q2. Nevada shut all dispensaries and required delivery-only sales. This forced us to adapt and improve our business, which, again, has really driven growth for us and enabled the market share gain in Q3.

Las Vegas is still feeling the effects of COVID, and you can see it in the tourist traffic, which is less than 40% of what it usually is this time of year. It makes what we’ve done in Q3 all the more impressive. We sell primarily to tourists and were somehow able to grow revenue despite visitor numbers being way down

Why and how did you get into the cannabis business?

Larry (Larry Scheffler, Planet 13 Co-CEO) and I met when we were both members of the Henderson City Council in the mid-1990s. We continued that relationship in business after we left the City Council. We were intrigued when we heard in late 2013 that Nevada was going to allow medical marijuana facilities to open. We immediately recognized how much of a transformational event this was and decided quickly that we wanted to be involved. And, as longtime residents of southern Nevada, we wanted to do it “Vegas style” – an over-the-top cannabis experience.

What has been Planet 13’s biggest success and its biggest regret?

Our biggest success to date is the Las Vegas SuperStore. We set out to build something unique – a truly special customer experience. And we’ve created a piece of Las Vegas. What Steve Wynn did for the club experience, we’ve done for the cannabis experience. As for regrets, it is really just delays on some regulatory things. We would love to already have our cannabis consumption lounges open. 

What are the biggest obstacles to opening and running a dispensary, especially one on the scale of the SuperStore? 

For us, it was primarily obtaining a licence and finding a location where a dispensary like the Planet 13 SuperStore could thrive. We operate a different dispensary that is completely experience-based. As a result, we require a larger dispensary that has parking and easy access from tourist hot spots. To give you an example, we looked at over 100 locations before finding our new location in Santa Ana, California.

How important has vertical integration been to your success?

Planet 13 is a vertically integrated business, but it’s really important to understand that we create a one-of-a-kind customer experience. At the SuperStore we combine entertainment, customer service and best-in-class choice and product quality. While we are a retailer first, having in-house production and our own products contributes a great deal to our success. We routinely have different products in Nevada’s 10 top-selling SKUs.

How does the company plan to grow? Will it be M&A, organic growth or a mix of the two?

It will be both. We will continue expanding in Nevada organically, opening another store and expanding delivery and wholesale. We will also be opening the store in Santa Ana. Outside of that, we are actively looking at M&A to expand into other tier-one cities where SuperStores could do well. 

Those are some big plans. Briefly review the balance sheet for us – is the cash already there to support the expansion?

We are in a strong financial position. We’ve done three financings in the last couple of months and have approximately $60 million in cash on the balance sheet and essentially no debt. We’ve historically been cash-flow positive so are set for accretive growth. 

What are the objectives for the next 12 months and the strategy for achieving them?

We’ve laid out a clear roadmap for investors. We are opening our next SuperStore in Santa Ana and over the next couple of years would like to have SuperStores in major cities and tourist locations across the US. We’re talking places such as Chicago, Boston, Phoenix and also Orlando, if Florida shifts to recreational legalization. 

As a final question, what would be your best advice for companies seeking to enter the cannabis industry?

It is the same as any other business. Focus on figuring out what the customer wants and then give it to them.

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about Planet 13 Holdings Inc.
at https://www.planet13holdings.com/ 

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

The Very Good Food Company: The name says it all for this group taking veggie-based meat alternatives to a delicious new level

Investors in The Very Good Food Company (CSE:VERY) know a great opportunity when they see one. The stock keeps climbing to new all-time highs, at time of writing sitting some 340% above its debut price in June of this year. The Very Good Food Company has come to market just as plant-based foods are a hot topic, but this is no trend-follower. This is a leader, which the company’s product line (and a taste of some of those products) makes abundantly clear.

Lifelong vegetarian Mitchell Scott co-founded The Very Good Food Company in 2016, his marketing skills perfectly complementing the culinary talent of fellow co-founder James Davison. The rest, as they say, is history.

Scott spoke to Public Entrepreneur from his office in Victoria about the secrets to The Very Good Food Company’s success.

There have been plant-based meats on the market for many years, but you seem to be stepping it up a notch, with different product formulations and looks, and a wide product range. Walk us through the genesis of the company and its culture.

We got started in the summer of 2016. My business partner, James, was a classically trained French chef from England. He moved to Vancouver and began working in a plant-based restaurant, and that’s when he got turned on to the plant-based movement. He ended up moving to Denman Island, also on the West Coast, and went vegan around the same time.

When he got to Denman he realized there were not really any restaurants, so there was nowhere for him to cook. He decided to get entrepreneurial and start making his own meat alternatives. A lot of the products on the market at the time were over-processed and full of fillers and other ingredients he wasn’t comfortable with. He wanted to make something with great ingredients – beans, vegetables, herbs and spices.

The first two products were veggie burgers and English breakfast sausages. He took them to the local farmers market and sold out in the first hour. That summer, he and his wife spent the week making the products in the kitchen and then going to the market and selling out.

That’s when I got to try the product, at a family barbecue, actually, as we are distantly related. I had grown up vegetarian and eaten a lot of not-so-great veggie burgers over the years, and I was just blown away by the quality. My background was in business development and marketing, and I was ready for something new, so we teamed up.

Talk about the consumer landscape for your products. Vegetarians are obvious customers, but are you also trying to bring in non-vegetarians?

Vegetarians and vegans are our core customers. There traditionally have not been a lot of good vegetarian options, so when people find something they like they stay with it and share it with their friends.

Since day one, we have wanted to appeal to a broader audience, and that was one reason for the butcher shop angle, where you would expect to see an assortment of meats. We want products to be approachable. Not some strange vegan product, but a burger, a sausage, some pepperoni. We try to make the products similar to meat products in look, taste, flavour and texture so they can appeal to a broad range of people.

What are your personal favorites in the product line? Where should someone start if they are new to your brand?

My personal favourite is adzuki bean pepperoni. Our taco stuffer is super popular – it is like a lightly spiced ground round. Those are my two favourites.

As for the broader product range, we have six or seven in grocery stores because we make them on a larger scale, and these are two types of burgers, two types of sausage, the taco stuffer, pepperoni, and we are just launching a hot dog.

In total, we have 15 or so, and the others are smaller runs and available at our shop or online. Those would be ones like steak, ribs and a holiday season item called Stuffed Beast. More labour is required for those, and we haven’t had a chance to scale up yet.

Tell us about your supply chain. How healthy and local are the ingredients that go into your products?

We try to source as locally as possible, so all of our produce is coming from farms on Vancouver Island and BC’s Fraser Valley. For beans, we are going to the Prairies, so about 95% of our inputs are Canadian.

In terms of what’s in the products, it is primarily beans, veggies, herbs and spices, with a bit of wheat flour to bind it all together. Of those veggies, we are looking at onions, beets, celery, mushrooms, leeks – nothing super exotic.

You had strong revenue growth in the most recent quarter and a solid gross margin. A lot of your overall expenses are operating costs rather than product costs. Talk to us about costs and margins going forward.

Operating costs are fairly high because our production process is still quite manual. We used to roll sausages and press burgers by hand, for example, but now we have machines to help with that. Once we move to full-scale production we’ll have a line that outputs 10 or 20 times what a manual line does now.

We are hoping to have larger-scale production up and running in early February. Until then, we’ve got our Victoria production facility, where we’ve upped production to 5,000 kilograms per week, from 2,000 in the summer. The next big production step will cost a few million to get up and running. The big cost is equipment, but we can get that financed and pay it off over a five-year term.

How about three to five years out? Where do you see The Very Good Food Company?

Our major focus in the next one to two years is the North American market. We want to continue rolling out e-commerce and wholesale grocery store supply. And our butcher shop and restaurant we see as a flagship store concept, so perhaps set them up in Montreal, Toronto, Los Angeles – we’ll hopefully make money from them, but they are more brand-based marketing tools.

After North America we want to be in Europe, with a similar concept of setting up a flagship store and then local e-commerce and wholesale. And it would be the Asia Pacific region after that, so Australia and Asia.

Those are some big goals. One senses from your answers that there is still plenty of room for this industry to grow.

This market is really just getting started. It is not just a trend. All of the producers in the industry are running full out. Companies that have been around for 15 or 20 years are still experiencing double-digit or triple-digit growth.

Beyond Meat was the first pure-play meat alternative company to IPO, and we were the second. I think you will see more public company opportunities. But the market is growing at such a rate that there is still tons of upside potential for everyone.

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about The Very Good Food Company
at https://www.verygoodbutchers.com/

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Public Entrepreneur Magazine: The Inspiration Issue – Now Live!

Welcome to the latest issue of Public Entrepreneur magazine, your source for in-depth stories of business leaders and entrepreneurs shaping the capital markets.

2020 has tested their resilience like never before, but the good news buried amidst all of this year’s difficult news is that smart capital sees opportunity on the horizon. In this Inspiration issue of Public Entrepreneur, we shine a spotlight on innovative companies in fields as diverse as plant-based foods, organic pesticides delivered by bees, hemp-based cigarettes, psychedelics and cannabis.

CSE-listed companies featured in this issue include:

  • The Very Good Food Company Inc. (CSE:VERY)
  • Planet 13 Holdings Inc. (CSE:PLTH)
  • Taat Lifestyle & Wellness Ltd. (CSE:TAAT)
  • Bee Vectoring Technologies International Inc. (CSE:BEE)
  • Jushi Holdings Inc. (CSE:JUSH)
  • Red Light Holland Corp. (CSE:TRIP)

Check out the most recent edition of Public Entrepreneur to learn how these companies’ visionary leaders and entrepreneurs are inspiring investors to put their capital to work:

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

NexTech AR Solutions: Evan Gappelberg’s latest venture is a big bet on the future of augmented reality

Imagine you are shopping online for a new couch. You find one you like, but it is hard to know if the colour quite matches the rest of your furniture, and the retailer’s website only has a 2D photo of it from the front.

Now imagine being able to view and rotate the couch in full 3D and use your phone to project a volumetric image that you can place, pinch, zoom and walk around, right into your living room.

That’s one example of how augmented reality is changing the way people shop, and shopping is just one of four verticals NexTech AR Solutions (CSE:NTAR) is pursuing in the sector.

Chief Executive Officer Evan Gappelberg calls it “ARitizing,” and his company has done it to everything from furniture to firearms to human holograms.

A self-described crazy entrepreneur looking for the next trillion-dollar megatrend, idea or industry, Gappelberg prides himself on identifying the next big thing. He has invested in dozens of successful ventures and led companies in the software and cannabis spaces, and three years ago he found his latest muse, augmented reality.

Augmented reality is a new concept to most people. Tell us how NexTech AR was formed and why you became interested in the industry.

I spent 30 years on Wall Street, and on Wall Street you always have to identify the hot stock in the hot sector. In the 1990s, it was the internet. Then energy and real estate took centre stage in the early 2000s. And then in 2008 the iPhone kicked off a paradigm shift, with mobile phones creating an entire new industry and stock sector called social media. Then, in 2015, everything switched to cannabis investing. Now and in the 2020s, technology, and specifically AR, AI and IoT, will create new billion-dollar companies seemingly overnight.

To be a successful investor I have followed the flow of money, which has made me kind of a generalist. If oil and gas is a hot sector, I do a ton of industry research and I become an expert in everything to do with oil and gas. Same for technology, healthcare, social media, etc. I research industries as I get deeper into them, and I start to understand how they work, which makes investing life interesting since I’m always learning something new.

I identified cannabis as the next big wave in 2011. It took a few years, but I brought in seed capital for a cannabis company that went public in Canada in 2016, and in 18 months it went up by 40 times. It was about identifying the trend and getting in before the big wave, then riding the wave, although to avoid a round trip you need to be able to see if the sector you are in is about to go through growing pains or get disrupted. Most of my investments are not buy and hold, although I did take a gaming company called Take-Two Interactive Software public in the 1990s, and today it has a $15 billion market cap. That was one I should have held.

Not to say I haven’t had my fair share of mistakes, but I do have a solid track record of picking industries that really have the potential to be grand-slam-home-run investments.

That brings us to augmented reality. I was introduced to AR in late 2017, and as soon as I saw it I knew that it was going to be the next big thing.

To take advantage of the coming AR megatrend, I founded NexTech AR Solutions in January 2018. Our first product was ARitize, which is an app that went live in 2018. It’s a white label AR app that we are having a lot of success with. It can create AR experiences and allow us to demo augmented reality to our enterprise clients. So that is how we got started.

As CEO and Founder of NexTech, I put my money where my mouth is by investing in my own company. I have invested millions in NexTech, and currently I take 100% of my salary in stock, plus I have made four purchases of the company’s shares this year alone. The only reason to do that is because I think the company is going to be worth a lot more over the following 12 to 24 months.

How does your technology augment a user’s reality?

We were first to market with a webAR e-commerce solution, which we launched in early 2019. It allows customers, on any web browser without requiring an app, to just click on a web icon and view a 3D model in augmented reality. And if they are on a mobile device, the product shows up as an AR digital twin.

We recently signed up an eyewear company, Clearly.ca, and are ARitizing seven different styles of glasses for them. We’ve created a special 3D/AR advertising platform where you can put your face up to your phone or up to your computer screen, and the glasses will appear on your face, so you can try them on virtually before you buy.

It sounds as if the possibilities are endless. What does the business model for such an evolving technology look like?

It’s a SaaS business model. You can download the ARitize360 app for free, and then after that you pay for usage. It can cost as little as $40 to $99 for an AR scan, and the goal is to get it down to $10 to $20 per scan. If we can do that, we expect to see mass adoption.

The cost has to do with human touch-up, as the less interaction there is with the asset, the cheaper it is. We are currently the only company that has virtually zero human interaction, so nobody needs to touch it.

Businesses can then use those assets on our 3D/AR ad network, which launched this year.

Most medium-sized businesses are spending $50,000 a month on ads, and we have proven that 3D ads generate a 300% increase in conversions. We have done testing on an e-commerce site we own, vacuumcleanermarket.com, and the 3D ads we ran brought a 300% jump in sales.

And if you can grow something 300% by switching to our ad network, you are going to do it. We get a percentage of those dollars, so it’s less about how much money we make on the 3D asset itself and more about how companies use that asset to drive sales for their business.

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting companies in different ways. What has it meant for NexTech so far?

Well, we had a platform called ARitize University, which has morphed into our recently acquired InfernoAR virtual events and video conferencing platform, which is surging right now.

InfernoAR is the only platform that offers virtual video conferences with augmented reality. So, if you’re watching a presentation and there’s a product on the screen, by using our ARitize app you can take your phone and scan a QR code, which literally pulls out of the screen whatever product it is you’re viewing and places it in the room with you. We see this as transformative new technology.

InfernoAR is booming. Because so much has been shut down by COVID-19, governments, businesses, universities, healthcare providers, really everyone is looking for a way to communicate remotely, and we have the only immersive platform driven by our AR that allows you to create human holograms or to have 3D/AR product views, all built into this video conferencing platform.

It’s funny watching people try it for the first time, because they will literally press their nose against the screen of their computer to get a closer look. I literally see them move all the way in, because they cannot believe what they are seeing.

We recently doubled our sales force, as we continue to sign up new customers, and we expect to double it again this year. Because we are in the fastest growing market sector, which is the technology sector enabling the work-from-home and shop-from-home paradigm shift, our business really has the potential to explode and grow exponentially, similar to the way that Zoom has grown recently. Zoom just reported that revenue grew 169% for their last quarter, while we reported 169% growth for last month alone, so similarities do exist.

You clearly have unique products that fit the times. How are sales going?

We had record revenue and record gross profit in the month of May. We saw $1.3 million in revenue and $800,000 in gross profit, which is a 169% increase year over year on the revenue side and a 290% increase on the profit side.

We are firing on all cylinders right now. Virtual events, augmented reality, e-commerce – they’ve never been stronger. And we see that trend continuing. June should be better than May, and July better than June. We are projecting $15 million to $20 million in revenue in 2020, and possibly double that in 2021, up from $6 million in 2019.

It goes without saying that a company such as NexTech is constantly evolving. What’s on your radar for the next little while?

There are a few things on the horizon. First is to continue to succeed with our virtual video conference platform and build up our sales force.

We also have our 3D/AR ad network that is starting to gain traction and show sales wins, so we are going to have to build a team around that and allow it to scale.

Lastly, we are looking at acquisitions. We have made four acquisitions since we went public, and we continue to look for more.

There are some exciting opportunities out there in the world of augmented reality. There are a lot of little start-ups that would fit right in with NexTech and help us to push our technology forward without having to spend time and money on development costs.

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about NexTech AR Solutions
at https://www.nextechar.com/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

InnoCan Pharma: Better delivery of CBD to the body holds the potential to lower costs and broaden treatment options

CBD is advertised as providing relief for anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, among other benefits. Its popularity reflects, in part, that it is positioned as non-psychoactive while still providing access to many aspects of the cannabis plant that are good for human health.

The challenge is to create a more precise and efficient method for delivering CBD into a patient’s body, preferably allowing for synergistic effects and/or controlled release.

InnoCan Pharma (CSE:INNO), based in the Israeli tech hub of Herzliya, has found what might be the golden ticket for CBD-integrated pharmaceutical technology in the form of a method to inject CBD into the body.

InnoCan and Ramot, Tel Aviv University’s business engagement centre supporting scientific discovery, are collaborating on a revolutionary exosome-based technology that targets both central nervous system indications and COVID-19 coronavirus symptoms, as CBD-loaded exosomes have the potential to provide anti-inflammatory properties to help infected lung cells recover. Public Entrepreneur spoke with InnoCan Chief Executive Officer Iris Bincovich recently about this project and other exciting directions the company’s technologies are taking.

Tell us about your personal background and how InnoCan came to be.

My background is in healthcare, working in the international pharmaceutical and cosmetic and medical device arena, and I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the Israel Institute of Technology.

I have experience developing strategies and building brands in the dermatology space, and I have worked and communicated with top pharmaceutical companies and cosmetic companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Estée Lauder and L’Oréal.

InnoCan Pharma was established by Yoram Drucker, an Israeli serial intrapreneur with experience founding companies in the field of stem cells; Ron Mayron, former CEO of Teva Israel, Teva Pharmaceutical being one of the most important generic drug producers in the world; plus Nir Avram, who was on the pharmaceutical innovation team at Perrigo and holds a number of patents, not to mention more than 30 years of experience developing topicals. We bring worldwide experience in healthcare and nearly 20 years of international marketing, business development and sales experience. I have led and managed hundreds of successful international transactions in the OTC cosmetics and dermatology sector.

InnoCan gives me an opportunity to utilize my experience, take my knowledge in the healthcare markets and combine it all into a company that today is active in three different segments.

We are involved in several pharma projects with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and with Tel Aviv University to better administer cannabinoids into the body with innovative delivery platforms and potential to treat several diseases.

We have also developed a line of over-the-counter topicals, Relief & Go, targeting a variety of skin conditions associated with issues like pain relief. Our pain relief spray provides a fast-action muscle relaxant and pain relief. It contains an analgesic blend of active ingredients, with isolated CBD to provide temporary relief of muscle and joint pain.

And we developed a line of CBD-integrated derma cosmetics, SHIR, whose formulations feature a tailored blend of active ingredients and technologies.

Let’s talk about the technology itself.  How is the company using exosomes and CBD?

We are developing a new platform that delivers cannabinoids in an improved way into the body. Our latest project is a collaboration targeting the COVID-19 virus with Tel Aviv University and Professor Daniel Offen, who heads the Neuroscience Laboratory at the Felsenstein Medical Research Center.

Exosomes have the ability to target damaged cells like a targeted missile, improve regeneration and assist in their recovery. Together with Professor Offen, an experienced researcher on cell and gene therapy in neurodegenerative diseases, we are looking to develop new technology that might be applicable to several indications.

Professor Offen is a co-founder of several biotechnology companies developing therapies for neurological disorders. One of them, BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, developed cell treatment for ALS patients and is now in Phase III clinical trials.

Along with Professor Shulamit Levenberg of Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, he previously utilized loaded exosomes administered by intra-nasal spray into rats with severe spinal cord injuries. The results were dramatic. Within a few weeks, the rats began to walk again.

With COVID-19, most people die from a secondary infection and lung or multi-organ failure. CBD is highly anti-inflammatory, and CBD-loaded exosomes, which we refer to as CLX, may hold the potential to provide anti-inflammatory properties and assist in the recovery of infected lung cells.

The lungs are the organ most affected by COVID-19, so the CLX are expected to be administered by inhalation.

How far along in the development process are you?

We are in the preclinical stage, which we estimate will take nine to 12 months. We will begin production of exosomes loaded with CBD and then do in-vitro proof of concept in several models.  From there, we will do animal proof-of-concept models and then safety testing.

InnoCan’s strategy is to combine R&D with commercial experience. Professor Offen has more than 20 years of experience working with stem cells and exosomes, and he has already established companies developing therapies for neurological diseases.

How do these different delivery methods compare to taking CBD oil orally?

We are developing a unique technology with Professor Barenholz from the Hebrew University to enable the injection of CBD into the body. When you take cannabinoids orally, about 80% of it is destroyed by enzymes of the liver. Patients overload to achieve a therapeutic level.  More than that, the dose is not controlled systematically. In each case, a drop of oil is put below the tongue and it might take some time from administration until therapeutic effect is achieved. Size and therapeutic effect can differ from one drop to the next. We are proposing a much more controlled and effective delivery system.

CBD is an oil molecule that normally cannot be easily injected into the body. But once isolated inside a capsule, such as a liposome, it could be injected. Liposomes are small vesicles that could entrap a substance inside.

Imagine a child with epilepsy – which there is already an FDA-approved CBD drug for – having a seizure; today he needs to be under close care, to be given the medicine, it will take a few minutes until the effect begins, and so on. InnoCan’s approach could be different. We are looking at a solution where the child will have a smartwatch connected to a pump with injectable CBD-loaded liposome. Then, instead of the child having a seizure, maybe falling to the floor and needing someone to administer CBD, the watch will sense the seizure and instruct the pump to inject a specific amount of CBD into the body. Precise delivery of CBD immediately could assist in relieving the seizure.

And this is just one application. For an epilepsy seizure, the CBD would be released immediately, but the liposomes can also be multi-layered to prolong the release of the CBD. We are developing a platform for several potential indications.

For example, for people suffering from chronic pain, we may be able to offer an injection once a week, and over time one could have a consistent release of CBD into the body.

Professor Barenholz has already developed a liposome-based breast cancer drug, named Doxil, that was licensed by Johnson & Johnson. We are working with people who have done this before and are connected to the commercial side. This is the value-driven proposition of the company.

Do you have any other products headed for commercialization?

We have our over-the-counter topicals, patent pending products that combine CBD and other active ingredients targeting skin conditions, pain relief, as well as for itchiness.

We also have a line of premium cosmetic products for women. Those products are now being produced by two manufacturers: one in New Jersey for the US market, and one in Portugal for Asia and Europe. Sales will start in the second half of 2020.

Eventually, the world will open up again, and there are lots of plans for the future, including additional distribution contracts for the topicals.

In Canada, we are in dialogue with several companies to enable local distribution. We need to collaborate with a local licensed producer in order for them to manufacture, distribute and sell our topicals to the different provinces. And I can say that we are in the screening process of who is going to be our local partner there.

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about InnoCan Pharma
at https://innocanpharma.com/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Draganfly: This drone pioneer aims to become the world’s go-to provider for “unique” data

While it was only in the past several years that drones gained broad recognition as valuable commercial tools, these amazing machines have actually been at work improving our lives for decades. Draganfly (CSE:DFLY) has been serving companies and governments looking for high-quality drones and related services for over 22 years, selling to markets as large and important as public safety, agriculture and industrial inspection.

That list is just a start says Draganfly Chief Executive Officer Cameron Chell. Public Entrepreneur caught up with Chell recently to discuss Draganfly’s development to date and where the company is heading in the medium and long terms. According to Chell, the sky’s the limit when it comes to the value Draganfly can bring to society – and Draganfly shareholders – given time. And that includes playing a role in helping the world manage the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

Drones have been available for commercial applications for a generation, but interest and real-world use have really gained momentum in the past few years. Why?

I think what’s driving the momentum is the actual practical use of drones. It’s sensor functionality, battery life, cost and actual regulation and awareness of drones, and people getting more comfortable with the functions they create. Basically, I think it’s the convergence of all the technologies coming together, and certainly the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fact that this is a tool that can be used in a contactless way, as a resource multiplier, or to carry out functions that humans don’t necessarily have to do now and risk close contact.

There are many competitors in the industry. How does Draganfly’s experience over more than two decades give you an edge?

We are the oldest commercial manufacturer of drones in the world. The first drone ever credited with saving a human life sits in the Smithsonian today, and it was a Draganfly drone fitted with a thermal camera. What separates us is our technology and our software.

You mentioned COVID-19. Draganfly recently initiated “pandemic drone” test flights. Tell us more.

On the pandemic side, the software we use can do two things: it can measure social distancing and mask-wearing, so it can measure how well people are carrying out what officials are putting in place. And the second thing it can do is measure vital signs.

The real advantage of our technology is that we can, for the first time ever, really, start to provide real-time data on the effectiveness of things like mask-wearing and social distancing, and we can start to get real-time data on community health, as opposed to waiting to see how full hospitals become, or relying on models of where the pandemic might go.

In this case, we can have cameras measure social distancing and vital signs to determine infection rates within a crowd on the beach at a particular time of day, or what the infectious or respiratory potential is of a crowd in a football stadium. It doesn’t make a diagnosis, it doesn’t identify people, but it does come back and provide real-time data on where we think we’re at in terms of the infectious cycle at that moment. We provide both an aerial and fixed-base camera platform for different use cases.

What has been the response from local governments and others to the test flights?

From a technology standpoint and from a public official standpoint, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. They understand that this isn’t a scenario where people are being identified and profiled, but rather it’s providing real-time data. For the first time they may not only get a sense of potentially what the health consequences are to first responders or the public in general, but they can also start to monitor whether potential hotspots are emerging and whether policies are working to help start opening up economies again.

Who are some of the customers for Draganfly drones?

Draganfly has sold over 9,000 drones, primarily for public safety, but also to agriculture, construction and mining. It is all the industries you would expect, but our primary customers have been public safety, law enforcement and border patrol.

We’re seeing demand grow from that sector, but interestingly also for consumer safety and workplace safety. Imagine places such as theme parks, convention centres, factory floors or retail outlets, where you’ve got consumers coming in and management wants to ensure a couple of things. One is that their workforce is safe and not bringing in potentially infectious diseases, and then there is consumer safety and advocacy, where you might have a convention centre or a theme park that’s putting this type of system in place to benefit consumer confidence. An interesting concept that we see starting to develop is that the same way you and I get a weather report right now, we’re going to see the emergence of health reports.

Where do you see the drone industry in three to five years? And what does this mean for you as a company?

We are a North American manufacturer, so there’s lots of data security concern as it relates to foreign manufacturers. We really see ourselves growing in the domestic space or, quite frankly, amongst NATO or Five Eyes countries, to be able to provide drones and secure data delivery.

How do you make money in the drone business? Is it volume, or government and agency customers that generate recurring revenue, or the consumer market?

For sure, it isn’t from consumers. We think foreign manufacturers will continue to dominate that space.

For us, we will continue to do contract engineering for military applications. That’s just a staple of ours that provides a good base of income. Ultimately, our recurring income will be driven by data analytics and management. Today we build specific drones, devices, software and services for industry verticals in which we can provide hardware, software, services and data management that give our customers a competitive advantage in their industry.

We do sell drones to end users, and it is a growing market. However, we see demand being very strong in turnkey and subscription-based services. Companies aren’t necessarily looking for a drone and a pilot. There’s an element of that, but the bigger growth area is going to be more around turnkey service. I’m an insurance company and I want rooftop inspections for 5,000 homes a month, say, and I just want the data. And where Draganfly differentiates itself is that we’re really good at incorporating sensors and providing data you typically can’t get from other drone providers.

You are also helping to find landmines. Tell us more about this work.

This is a great example of a large untapped market that requires specialized equipment and software, not to mention data analytics and management. We’re working with a partner called Windfall Geotek, which has a ton of experience in this space, but they need a specialized drone with specialized sensors in order to provide their AI with the data that is beyond just magnometer data. We expect to roll that out in force over the next eight months.

What’s really exciting about this is not just being able to uncover mines without having people and dogs at risk, but also the amount of data that we collect – the patterns of mines, the number of mines missed in the past, the areas and the regions. Building a database of this type of stuff really helps the AI to be able to uncover more mines.

Your acquisition of Dronelogics Systems earlier this year marked a big change. What does this deal mean for Draganfly?

Dronelogics is a 10-year-old company with a fantastic reputation and incredible management. They do great integration work with multiple drone systems.

We intend to make more acquisitions, and the two principals at Dronelogics are key for us to build on top of our acquisitions and do proper integration. The other advantage of the acquisition is that they sell a lot of other manufacturers’ products, but as we get moved into that mix, we become vertically integrated a bit whereby they can provide either Draganfly products and/or our contract engineering services.

You’ve built up a strong team. Tell us about the group.

Andy Card is former White House Chief of Staff under George W. Bush. He was also Secretary of Transportation. His endorsement of our company is important. He only sits on two boards: us and BNSF, which is the massive railroad system. To have his ear, his insight and global perspective has been fantastic. He works with us on public relations, but also in terms of being able to provide business development insight into both the government and industrial worlds.

We’ve also got John Mitnick. He’s the former General Counsel of Raytheon and former General Counsel of Homeland Security. John’s role is insight and advisory, but also penetrating us into the government’s position of not moving forward with foreign drones and looking to North American manufacturers.

Julie Myers is on our advisory board. She’s former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security. We also have Dr. Jack Chow, who was the first Assistant Director-General of the WHO on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, who is a big drone advocate and has been for 10 years.

Is there any other core message the market needs to know about Draganfly?

Draganfly is a data company that makes drones, devices and software, and provides services to create and provide better data. The strategic differentiator for Draganfly is that we provide data to our customers that basically nobody else can. An example would be the landmine data, or health measurement data. You might think of us today as a drone manufacturer, but three years from now, or five years from now, I believe Draganfly will be a prominent business brand you will associate with data analytics and management. That’s where you go to get your data, or that’s where industry goes to get its data. Data is valuable, but unique data is priceless, and the name of the game for Draganfly is to create unique data.

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about Draganfly
at https://draganfly.com/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Sixth Wave Innovations: After taming mining, explosives and cannabis challenges, this PhD-filled team puts COVID-19 on notice

Almost everywhere you go these days, you come into contact with multiple products and services without knowing they are there. Some make life easier or more convenient, while others go so far as to keep you alive, or at least out of harm’s way. We don’t see these products because a non-expert would not even conceive of such things. But thank goodness some experts do, as some of these technologies are fueling the promise of overcoming COVID-19 and pandemics of the future.

Sixth Wave Innovations (CSE:SIXW) is one such group, where a highly accomplished team that includes seven full-time PhDs is adapting proprietary molecular identification technology to tackle COVID-19.

Sixth Wave’s COVID-19 research builds on its recent successes in partnering with the United States Department of Defense on explosives detection, as well as on its gold refining and its extraction of CBD and THC from cannabis. Its technology has consistently provided solutions to highly complex scientific challenges. Now, Sixth Wave is committed to successfully adapting its proprietary rapid-detection technology to the COVID-19 puzzle in time to make a difference.

More on that shortly. But first, the basis of Sixth Wave’s business: molecularly imprinted polymers. Few people know what these are, as only a handful of companies in the world even work on furthering such technology. It truly is science at the cutting edge.

Most people think of plastic when they hear the word “polymers,” but these large molecules are far more ubiquitous. For example, wood is a polymer (a natural one), as is protein. To put it simply, a polymer is a material made of long repeating chains of molecules. Each has unique properties, dictated by the types of molecules in the chain and how they bond together. The basic molecules that serve as the links in a polymer chain are referred to as monomers, a defining feature being their capacity to form chemical bonds with other molecules.

At its most basic level, Sixth Wave’s technology identifies specific molecules by creating a polymer with qualities that first attract the molecule in question, then see if it fits. Imagine, for example, a complex magnetic puzzle missing a single piece. The magnetic field draws certain types of pieces with opposite magnetic charges toward the puzzle. When one fits, the puzzle signals to the user that it has found the missing piece.

When a Sixth Wave product identifies its target molecule, it triggers a specific chemical reaction embedded in the polymer by Sixth Wave scientists. In the COVID-19 example, it might cause a colour change to indicate that the person being tested carries COVID-19. The applications are endless.

“The doctors are telling us that water droplets are transmitting COVID-19 from our mouths,” says Dr. Jon Gluckman, Sixth Wave’s Chief Executive Officer. “Once developed, we think we can take the new polymer and embed it into a variety of testing devices, including in an N95 mask or a breathalyzer. You could arrive at an assisted living facility, for example, and be asked to put on a mask as you check in. If it changes colour after several breaths, they know you are carrying the virus. You could do the same thing at airports, train stations or ferry terminals. This would provide a way for everyone to be tested so that even if someone looks good and does not show symptoms, they don’t get beyond the point of inspection if they are carriers and risk infecting others.”

The key to the concept is the ease of testing. No machines or bloodied fingers. No swabs poking into your nasal cavity.

The idea is to embed the polymer in testing form factors that are inexpensive, easy to self-administer and allow for immediate results. “The earlier and more frequently you can test, the better,” says Gluckman. “We need something you can use every day, so you can show up for work, be tested, and if you don’t have it, you’re good to go, and everyone is safe and comfortable with their environment.”

As mentioned earlier, the Sixth Wave team – many of whom Gluckman has been working with for over 15 years – has a proven track record of commercializing molecularly imprinted polymers.

Explosives detection was the largest success, seeing Sixth Wave develop and sell wipes for military applications that could detect TNT, ammonium nitrate and other explosives at extremely low concentrations. “If you wiped a surface and there was a nanogram worth of explosives there, you would see the colour change,” explains Gluckman.

More recently, the team has developed products for the mining industry, conducting lab and field trials with some of the world’s top gold companies, the current focus being pilot plant testing with Kinross Gold Corporation.

“We moved into mining with a cheaper, more efficient and environmentally friendly way to conduct gold and silver extraction when companies use our polymer in place of activated carbon,” says Gluckman. One of the main advantages is that Sixth Wave’s IXOS product has been capturing more precious metals, and fewer of the unwanted minerals that come along with them, than when activated carbon is used.

Similar technology is used in another new Sixth Wave product called Affinity, which extracts CBD from hemp, or CBD and THC from cannabis. High efficiency and high purity are the selling points for Affinity, and Gluckman says the company is ready to start recognizing revenue in this segment during 2020.

“On the cannabis side, our development work is largely done, and we are finalizing supply agreements with our manufacturer. Affinity will also be manufactured at our facility in Lafayette, Louisiana,” Gluckman explains. Extensive test work was conducted with cannabis producers, and Sixth Wave is confident the demand is there.

“With mining as well, very little additional development is needed,” Gluckman continues. “We have already taken the production to commercial levels, and our focus now is getting the product to market. We see a lot more drive for innovation at gold mines, which leads us to have more customer opportunities.”

But it is a slow cycle. “A company might choose our technology but still be in the pre-feasibility stage,” Gluckman notes. It’s a market worth the wait, mind you, because a scenario assuming 10% adoption across global gold production suggests the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to Sixth Wave annually, according to Gluckman.

With the scientists who develop the core polymers freed from having to do modifications and test work for the mining and cannabis markets, development resources are becoming more focused on COVID-19 detection. “The world has an immediate and dire need to manage COVID-19,” says Gluckman. “There will be more deaths and little economy left if we don’t figure this out as a society. We’re proud to do our part to help the world get healthy again.”

To that end, chemistry work on the COVID-19 product has begun. Importantly, Sixth Wave can use synthetic molecules for development so that it does not have to work with the live virus. This is another benefit of past product development – handling live explosives is equally undesirable when working on products that involve chemical reactions.

As for the timing of COVID-19-detection products, “I think we are about four or five months away from having particles that would have gone through some testing and internal verification,” says Gluckman. “We are putting together a team that will include external laboratories to provide testing with the live virus. We have several universities we are talking to, and they have access to what we would need to test with.”

Sixth Wave is also partnering with companies that could manufacture products featuring the polymers, including a producer of N95 masks. “I would think in a six-month time frame that we could have the first test units available for approval by the Canadian government, and we’d submit them for approval in the United States.”

At this point, it should be clear that Sixth Wave is not just some company jumping on the COVID bandwagon. It is using proven in-house technology to tackle the COVID-19 chemical structure in more or less the same way it has approached other complex scientific challenges that have continuously resulted in successful solutions.

“In the space of seven years, Sixth Wave has developed and sold millions of dollars of explosives detection products to the US military, and we have created markets for molecularly imprinted polymers in the mining and cannabis industries,” Gluckman concludes. “Our products all lead to lower costs, are easy to use and feature capabilities unavailable with any other technology. We are a young company, but we are solid. We are not in this for a quick buck. We want to make a positive difference in the world.”

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about Sixth Wave Innovations
at https://sixthwave.com/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

HealthSpace Data Systems: Governments in need of contact tracing to cope with COVID-19 turn to a trusted name

Public health departments have for decades been running contact tracing programs to reduce the spread of communicable diseases and other threats, stepping in to mitigate the impact of everything from unsafe restaurant food to unprotected sex to tainted tattoo needles.

But amid the widespread and deadly COVID-19 pandemic, contact tracing has taken on a new sense of urgency. In the US, the novel coronavirus has spread to all 50 states, and deaths climbed above 125,000 in late June 2020. Meanwhile, the introduction of an effective vaccine is still some way down the road.

As a result, overwhelmed state and local health officials across the US are turning to private companies such as HealthSpace Data Systems (CSE:HS) to help devise solutions.

HealthSpace, an established Software as a Service (SaaS) company currently serving more than 500 public health departments across North America, responded to the challenge by extending its HSCloud Suite and My Health Department products to create a fully automated digital contact tracing platform for COVID-19.

Several US public health departments have deployed the British Columbia–based company’s platform, including the State of Hawaii and several counties in Washington State, Illinois, Michigan and North Carolina. The automated platform can be up and running within 48 hours, although most departments usually complete their initial setup over the course of two weeks.

“Our platform not only has the ability to be deployed rapidly, it fits perfectly with the normal course of work public health departments are already doing,” explains Chief Executive Officer Silas Garrison. “We believe that as numerous people begin to be employed to bolster contact tracing efforts, our platform will be a proven benefit to accentuate the human effort with an automated solution.”

Over the years, health departments have typically had in-house staffers or contractors retrace the steps of people who tested positive for diseases and record anyone who had contact with them. The trackers then embarked on the painstaking process of cold-calling each contact to ask a series of questions and determine if they had experienced symptoms, while also encouraging them to avoid infecting others.

However, ramping up operations to handle the scope and breadth of COVID-19 tracing is a daunting task for most cash-strapped state and local governments. It means hiring hundreds, if not thousands, of tracers to work in large call centres. It also means training the contact tracers through online programs or sometimes weeks of in-person instruction.

Even with the best training, there’s a huge hurdle to overcome, as contact tracing is only effective if the contactee is willing to pick up the telephone and converse with the caller. The pick-up rate for unfamiliar or unidentified numbers in today’s society is very low. And the people who do answer are often guarded and uncooperative, if not downright abusive.

The logistics of launching a contact tracing program, hiring and training tracers, renting office space, and maintaining it for months can be costly, and far beyond the reach for some jurisdictions facing plummeting tax revenues as a result of the pandemic.

For HealthSpace, given the company’s years of work providing hundreds of state and local governments with its powerful self-serve enterprise cloud and mobile platform to manage their operations, stepping up to help both clients and non-clients in need during an unprecedented public health crisis seemed like a natural fit.

Garrison says it was during an initial general outreach to its customers about COVID-19 that HealthSpace first learned of the growing need at public health departments to find ways for a rapid scaling up of existing contact tracing operations, assuming the departments even had such operations to begin with.

He says HealthSpace’s automated contact tracing platform is simply a “modified version” of its foodborne-illness-tracking service, which has been in use for years. That is why the company was able to deploy the platform quickly, with minimal need for additional capital or other resources.

“It took very little technical effort to get this up. And immediately we turned it on and we started to spread the word out to our customers,” says Garrison. “We had several early adopters, literally within 24 hours, and it didn’t take too long for the word to spread.”

The platform, which was rolled out in April, connects with individuals daily by sending a unique and secure link via text message or e-mail. The link leads to a questionnaire that the recipient fills out by entering symptoms, temperature, places visited and people they have been in direct contact with.

These latter people are sent questionnaires each day, too. If anyone exhibits symptoms, health officials know immediately, issue quarantine directives and arrange for testing or treatment.

Information is securely stored inside the company’s cloud-based platform. Public health departments can access the encrypted data – which they own – for detailed real-time reporting and analysis. In addition, the data can be securely sent to healthcare providers, a service the company has always provided to its customers as part of its My Health Department product.

Garrison notes that HealthSpace’s automated platform isn’t meant to supplant human tracers. “They still need teams of people to manage this information, because you might have all the information oriented digitally. It still takes more specialized knowledge and skill to look over that information and determine who they need to make a more proactive outreach to.”

In order to get established clients, as well as new ones, to adopt the contact tracing platform, the company is providing a version for free, for 90 days in most cases. Also, waiving upfront fees acknowledges that many local and state governments don’t have the funds to purchase the platform right now.

“They are getting the benefit of the platform today for a situation that is dire and are able utilize it while they’re waiting on getting their funds in place,” Garrison explains.

“What this has done has actually worked to our benefit. They are now references and have been spokespersons for us in several key areas that will translate to sales. So, it actually works as a very powerful, tip-of-the-spear sales tool, because they are able to get it for free, get it into people’s hands and appreciate its power and value. And now they’re talking to other potential customers about it, which could directly translate into exponential sales growth for us.”

Organizations deciding to use the platform for the long term will pay $200 to $300 per month for each user – a nurse or epidemiologist, for example. A client requiring 10 user accounts could thus generate up to $36,000 in annual revenue.

The approach appears to be working, as HealthSpace announced its first contract incorporating contact tracing for COVID-19 in mid-June. The agreement will see Mecklenburg County Health Department in North Carolina use HSCloud Suite for contact tracing and managing its Onsite Program for five years. The work with Mecklenburg County will generate revenue of US$157,800 for HealthSpace.

The company shared news that same month that counties in Ohio, Arizona and Illinois have started using the platform as well, with HealthSpace providing it on a gratis basis for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2020 and beyond, Garrison says public health departments can pivot the automated tracing platform to tackle other epidemiological outbreaks once the COVID-19 crisis is under control. For example, the company is in talks about using it to track people living with HIV.

“The platform is so flexible and powerful that it extends well beyond the COVID-19 situation,” Garrison says. “This is a sustainable path forward for a new business model within our existing platform.”

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about HealthSpace Data Systems
at https://web.healthspace.com/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

VSBLTY Groupe Technologies: Helping brick-and-mortar retail fight back with superior consumer insight

In the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report, a perplexed Tom Cruise enters a futuristic Gap store and is immediately greeted by a friendly face on a digital screen welcoming him and asking about his recent purchase. Twenty years ago it seemed like a far-flung idea, but today Cruise’s interaction is well within the realm of possibility for the modern shopper.

In a sense, the futuristic shopping experience is an early example of the use of proactive digital display, a technology that Philadelphia-based VSBLTY Groupe Technologies (CSE:VSBY) is pioneering for the retail and security sectors. Artificial intelligence and machine learning comprise much of the horsepower behind this transformative product.

“Everything in that movie is absolutely what we can do right now without any stretch,” says VSBLTY Chief Executive Officer Jay Hutton. “Right now, we are gathering metadata, or non-identifiable information, to aggregate and collate at scale.”

The idea for VSBLTY came together in the minds of Hutton and business partner Tim Huckaby, a developer at Microsoft and now VSBLTY’s Chief Technical Officer. The two believed the big players in digital display had failed to innovate over the last decade and that the industry was poised to undergo significant disruption.

Was there a way to create digital signage that contained computer vision software to measure quantitative and qualitative engagements and interactions? Hutton and Huckaby knew that previously uncaptured metrics such as the characteristics of individual shoppers could provide valuable insight to retailers.

Enter VSBLTY’s software. The key lies in marrying digital displays with real-time measurement, allowing retailers new revenue opportunities by delivering the right message at the right time to a specific audience.

For today’s retailer, traditional point-of-sale and out-of-home advertising provides limited engagement with the consumer and does not generate data to analyze. The VSBLTY platform integrates signage, security and analytics to optimize opportunities throughout a store.

“The physical store supplants the internet as a premium place for brands to deliver impressions because the shopper is in a place where they can buy the product being promoted – it’s instant gratification,” Hutton explains. “Brands will re-vector internet spend to stores because the store is more measurable, more instantaneous and more connected to upselling, or sales lift.”

Results from successful activations have challenged long-held assumptions about shopper behaviour. One example, centred around the March Madness basketball tournament, started with the idea that men aged 25 to 40 would rather not cook a meal when they are watching games. VSBLTY’s software was deployed in the frozen foods aisle of a grocery store using five different products and measured on multiple engagement types such as traffic, coupon redemption and sales. The outcome? An approximately 500% increase in engagement compared to conventional signage in the frozen foods section, and three times the coupon redemptions. In an unintended result, the entire frozen foods aisle saw a sales boost.

The shift from wanting more impressions to more qualitative engagements is a seismic trend in the marketing world. Companies are using phrases like “customer intimacy” and “brand engagement” more than ever, Hutton says. “The companies know the only way to get to this ‘promised land’ is through digital means. It’s enormously disruptive.”

For companies, it’s not so much a question of if they can use it, but if they will. There are very real privacy – and legal – concerns associated with this type of technology, which Hutton acknowledges. He shares that one large brand eager to adopt the software believes customers are ready for it, but the company wants to navigate the legal complexities before it commits to installation.

But there’s a “clear runway” to adoption, Hutton says, as a new generation raised with the internet comes to the fore. Shoppers can opt in to the experience much the same way as they do by using a points card or a brand’s mobile application. It’s exchanging privacy for value, Hutton says. “I’m willing to give up some things that are germane and intimate to me in exchange for some value. That’s an open, ongoing dialogue in retail.”

The probability of the younger generation accepting this trade-off is much higher than with older consumers, which is partly why retailers haven’t adopted the technology en masse. “The brands know it’s a waiting game,” Hutton says. “If they do it now, they may only see, at best, 30% opt-ins, but years from now, it’s 75%.”

Retailers are expected to fully understand the model over time, and the same goes for using the displays to enhance security. Deployed in the public sphere, the technology could be used to help identify people with warrants out for their arrest or to pinpoint anomalous behaviour. “Our hypothesis is that we are overwhelming our operators with too much to look at,” Hutton says. “By letting the software analyze the information, we’re giving the operator some context.”

One of VSBLTY’s biggest deals was signed in 2019 with Energetika, an international provider of lighting solutions, to install thousands of security kits powered by VSBLTY software in Mexico City.

Energetika deployed cameras and VSBLTY ran the analytics, looking for altercations, fires, car accidents, persons of interest and gathering crowds. Around six months into the project, the crime rate has fallen by a significant amount in several of the city’s 16 boroughs. One of these, Cuajimalpa de Morelos, went from 11th safest to safest in about seven months. “It’s like a cyber neighbourhood watch leading to an outcome that you could argue is valid and reasonable,” Hutton explains.

The technology is also being deployed to help contain the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Hutton. VSBLTY recently teamed up with a cyber security product and building services company to provide advanced camera technology that enhances security and enables temperature screening before people enter office buildings.

“Computer vision has the ability to identify who you are, whether you’re supposed to be where you are and determine if you’re showing any fever symptoms,” Hutton says. “That’s a really interesting connection point between what we currently do and what COVID-19 is requiring us as a society to do.”

The company is looking ahead to a busy 2020 as its pandemic involvement adds more to an already full plate. In 2019, VSBLTY received more orders in the fourth quarter than it had in the first three quarters combined, and it saw its first seven-figure order in the first quarter of 2020.

The challenge now is to keep momentum going throughout the coronavirus pandemic. But Hutton still anticipates that 2020 will be the company’s first profitable year, offering revenue guidance of between $10 million and $15 million.

If VSBLTY’s success is any indication, that Gap store in Minority Report may become reality before we know it. “Brands are dominated by people who grew up on the internet and understand that impressions are best maximized where there’s measurement,” says Hutton. “What’s happening in that movie is not too far away.”

This story was featured in the Public Entrepreneur magazine.

Learn more about VSBLTY Groupe Technologies
at https://vsblty.net/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Public Entrepreneur Magazine: The Technology Issue – Now Live!

Welcome to the latest issue of Public Entrepreneur magazine, your source for in-depth stories of entrepreneurs from a wealth of different industries.

While social distancing measures in recent months have forced individuals to stay apart, one constant has kept everyone connected: technology. In this issue of Public Entrepreneur, we examine how technology has become more important than ever in the healthcare industry and how it has proven to be vital in fighting COVID-19.

We take a closer look at how visionary leaders and entrepreneurs are harnessing the power of innovation to change the world – from enhancing video conferencing with augmented reality, to monitoring community health, to using rapid-detection technology to quickly test for the virus.

CSE-listed companies featured in this issue include:

Check out the most recent edition of Public Entrepreneur here: