By Julien Pescheux, Director at nosoapcompany
1) Tell us a little about yourself…
Born French, I spent my childhood and teenage years in Asia. My wife, of Dutch descent, and I met in Laos and a few years later our two children were born in Indonesia. On the professional side of things, I have a background in Hospitality and Tourism from Glion and Innovation from MIT. For the past 20 years I have had the opportunity to take on leadership roles at country and regional level within the Integrated Facilities Management Industry and Security Industry in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In the process, I have become passionate about organizational transformation through people and technology. Recently I have embarked on an entrepreneurial challenge helping to turn-around a small family-business that specialized in state-of-the-art connected pumping systems. As fate would have it, this was at the start of 2020…
…and your company.
Prior to my joining nosoapcompany®, the business was run by our Chief Engineer, Timo Voorhuis, and hygiene veteran Fokke Bolderheij, who together founded NSC in 2014. You know those people who press the elevator button with their knuckle? Well, that’s us. We turned Germaphobia from a condition into a profession. But we also happen to be passionate about great design, smart tech, and powerful marketing, and we love to help brands tell a powerful story. We’ve been on a mission to break the chain of infection long before Covid-19, so we have a leg up.
Based on a gap in the market that they identified well ahead of market needs, we set out to design and engineer a connected dispenser, which was unavailable at the time. Our mission was to create a dispenser that was always functioning, always full, customizable and that looked good. We wanted a dispenser that could be ready for use with one flip of the switch, that could be mobile, autonomous and, deployed anywhere. We wanted to make hand-hygiene so intuitive that it would become second nature. Instead of something that is clinical and sterile, we wanted to make hand-sanitizing sexy.
Looking back over this past year, this mission has never been more pertinent.
2) What problem does your solution solve?
We are 7.8 billion on the planet. Public hygiene is now more than ever, a social and corporate responsibility. We participate to this effort because we bring to the market a Long lifecycle, User-Friendly, Intelligent and Brand-Experience-Enabling Hand Sanitizer dispenser. What’s more, we think the game is changing… we think, that brands will need to connect tangibly with their customers, and we have proven that this act of care can be mutually beneficial. We are all increasingly more in tune with the carbon cost of “throw away” devices and, that data, sustainable design and ease of maintenance is the right value proposition for us to build the largest network of connected disinfectant dispensers.
3) What kind of ROI does your solution offer to customers?
We have demonstrated that in-store sales of products marketed on purpose-customized-dispensers increased sales from 30% up to 117%. More specifically, this was tested and proven on artisanal liquor brands and high-end beauty products.
Large properties and campuses that use the App to trigger refills of hand disinfectant shave of approximately 2.5 min each day per area. On a campus like the University of Lille, that needs to be multiplied by 50 areas which comes out to 125 min saved each day.
The same would apply to our healthcare customers and large office buildings.
One of our customers realized that the pump time toggle function meant they could switch from liquid hand disinfectant to a high viscosity gel and save 4 liters p/week per device. At an average price of € 10.- a liter, savings are substantial over time.
On one end, there is a time X money factor driven by the tech and on the other end we have the design and reliability element that seems to draw people in and trigger an association of care and quality with brands.
4) What is the most important thing in using Sigfox 0G network?
Managing hundreds of disinfectant dispensers deployed across multiple locations is the new norm. Having managed at one point € 5B worth of property asset, I can tell you that a new variable is a new cost and an added focus point for your customer experience. IoT is here to help facilitate operations and enhance your customer’s experience through checks and trigger points.
Thanks to our robust Battery System and Sigfox’s 0G network, onsite installation can be done in 5 minutes without any concern for network setup, complicated firewalls or security breaches.
As a leading IoT service provider, Sigfox not only offers simplicity, it also offers the facility of having data backup as a default on its servers. When you’re a startup, this is a noticeable advantage.
7) What’s next for nosoapcompany®?
nosoapcompany® is launching several new variants of its dispenser line over the next 3 months. In addition, the pumping technology will be marketing as a modular device for other dispenser makers across the globe and since we’re now RC2 ready, we hoping to make some headwinds in the North American market.
Use cases
More information on https://www.nosoapcompany.com/
