While I do appreciate the condescension, I never said I was enthused enough to actually do it.
…[deleted because I shouldn’t take the bait]
I do believe it could work, though. None of the obstacles cited are deal breakers – e.g., wiring is already present behind many urinals for the auto-flush. The terminals could even be loss leaders to make up for any installation issues, and revenue from advertising split with the establishment might be helpful as well (it’s apparently working at gas pumps). An investor would want to test it in several markets first. Again, it’s one of those startups that takes a larger investment up front. For those with the cash and gonads, it could pay off. Or not.[/quote]
It’s not condescension.. (and I read your comment before you decided to [deleted because I shouldn’t take the bait] replacement….
My point is you are asking the customer (who in this case is the bar owner) who most likely isn’t a geek (he’s a bar owner, not a enginerd), to understand a new technology to sell adds that will require him/her to allow some random company to come in and drill holes in the wall, run electricity in the wall, mount LCD’s screens, probably setup a wireless network to push content to those screens every-so-often, guarentee the network doesn’t get hacked, the LCD’s don’t get vandalized…to display adds to people taking a pee/poop that for at which they will be looking maybe 1-2 minutes….and that this technology is going to make their business more profitable because they can now supplement their core business (selling booze) with dollars paid by advertisers….
I was trying to say a good portion of your customers (not all, but I would say most) are tech-phobic when/if you propose to doing something real simple stuff (like displaying adds) and replacing it with technology…..It’s different than a bar owner buying an ipad or an iphone or a tablet, in that those things have clearly specific uses for those devices…
How is what you’re proposing any different or better from a bar that puts printed advertisements behind a plexiglass mounted above the urinal and regularly changes them, per contract with an advertiser, and not have to deal with all the technology, installation, maintanence, etc? I bring this up, because there are plenty of places (bar and non-bar) that I’ve seen do exactly that…
Consider the idea again about putting a few lcd screens on urinals,etc… You now one time installation costs to, mount lcds, run power to these units, install protective glass on these units, and in doing so, have to disrupt the normal function of said urinals while such non-trivial installation takes place…I’m trying to understand how a bar or a business is going to want to have to deal with this sort of disruption, without understand the clear benefit of how he/she could be better off with this idea than mounting a bunch of printed advertisements in the urinal which wouldn’t require massive changes (such as running power,etc to these lcd units).
Plus one big disadvantage of this proposed idea is now, you need to deal with maintenance. How are you going to get ad’s on the system? Wireless? So does the business now need to have a wifi network too? Who’s going to set that up and maintain that? What if it’s down.
Also, as much as electronics are getting increasingly more and more reliable, these things will fail.
What if an LCD screen is broken? Who’s going to repair that, and who’s responsibility will it be to deal with calling the repair guy? The bar owner? Do you think he has better things to do that to constantly check if the 15+ or so LCD screens in their urinals are working or not?
Call it condescending if you want. Perhaps you’re just a bit sensitive about someone else pointing out the issues with these ideas. But if you don’t think these ideas have issues, then prove me wrong by doing it….And if you succeed, that’s great… I’m happy for you….
Lastly, I stand by my statement that most people are tech-phobic in the u.s…….Otherwise you would see targeted coupons/advertisements/promotions based on geo-coordinates and you would see consumers and retailers jump on technology like this….
For instance, do any of you use things like shopkick?
Think of it as a geo-location based MySimon.com (remember that?).
I know from experience there are many people trying to push this idea…for the past 2-3 years…Still waiting for it to catch on here in the states….Personally, I don’t think we’re ready for it for the next 5-6….Most people aren’t geeks……
And all these geo-location based shopping companies are going to run into the same problem….For it to work, it’s not just about signing up the big retailers (Best Buy,target,etc)….For it to work well, you need to sign up all the small mom/pop kiosks and stores at the mall…Because the value of this sort of thing isn’t about just getting what sort products/promotions/specials are available at the big retailers….You want to be able to see what’s hot/available/specials that are novelty items/etc….
BUT, the problem is that all of the mom/pop shops don’t have the technological know-how or the capability to do a lot of this and expose their inventory onto a cloud, nor are most of them sophisticated enough to do this…Nor are they necessarily the one who has the means and bandwidth to gamble untested technology….Even if you were willing to do this for them for free….(speaking from experience)….People aren’t just ready for it….Especially when it comes to explaining to mom/pop store the virtues of their business’ pricing/promotion/etc for each item to a cloud system that manages real time/targeted promotions….
