Fairmart increases stores’ online traffic

INTERVIEW Fairmart increases stores’ online traffic

Retailers can use Fairmart’s software to automatically digitise their inventory.

Retail stores in Southeast Asia could have earned US US$4.5b more in sales if only consumers could find their products online. Now, these stores, whose operations are mainly physical, are at risk of losing another US$4.5b, should they fail to digitise their inventory, tech startup Fairmart said.

As an example Fairmart CEO and co-founder Jan Gasparic shared that he would often search online for new pet food or toy for his dog. But whilst there are three pet stores within the two-kilometre radius from his home, his online searches lead him to marketplaces elsewhere, sometimes even overseas.

“I would look through the results and I’d see a lot of online listings. Then I would go into the map section and try to find which one of my local stores actually carries this product. But because the stores don’t digitise their inventory, they essentially just do not come up in the search results at all. Now, then I’ll keep on scrolling,” he said.

“The reason this problem exists is [that] current solutions are essentially made for e-commerce, and they’re a poor fit for the way physical retailers work,” Gasparic said.

He shared that physical retailers have a high number of stock-keeping units with some stores storing more than 2,000 items, making it difficult for retailers to manually digitise their products.

Putting local stores on the map

This is where the tech startup comes in as Fairmart enables small businesses to increase foot traffic to retailers by installing an IoT device that allows businesses to digitise products available in their stores. Retail stores then get a real-time feed of the barcodes that are being scanned and, with Fairmart’s software, the stores automatically generate a list of its products online.

“In order for them to manually digitise all their products, they would need over 200 hours of manual data entry each month and we bring that number essentially down to zero,” he said.

Gasparic raised that whilst shoppers have gone “irreversibly digital,” it is important that retailers digitise operations as 95% of transactions are expected to happen offline.

He also said that consumers are now inclined to do “near me” searches, wherein they look at buying the products at physical stores even as their purchasing process started online.

“Essentially, that’s equivalent to what window shopping is in the physical world. It’s just the start stage. Now our role as a company is to help physical retailers to unlock the potential of capturing these local searches and drive people to their store,” he said.

Making sense of the data

Fairmart’s digitisation strategy benefits retailers in two ways, that is through automation and data, Gasparic said. For instance, he shared that one of their merchant partners had believed that the customers that visit their store are after the frozen food products they sell. It was not until a month after using Fairmart’s software that the merchant found that most of their customers, particularly new ones, frequent their store for the specific product offered only at their store – sambal sauce.

“All these kinds of things that typically you would need right before your meal if you’re cooking for the night and you don’t know where to buy. But with this kind of data, we’re able to empower the retailer to make better decisions in terms of the kinds of products that we’re actually getting people into their store,” he said.

Gasparic said Fairmart has seen its software uplift the performance of local stores that have now digitised their inventories. And, generally, retailers have reported between an 8% to 10% increase in organic leads in their store, largely because customers now find specific products they carry in online searches. He added this essentially allows merchants to capture new customers in an organic way as it is based on specific and unique products of the store.

Fairmart’s digitisation strategy benefits retailers through automation and data (Photo: Jan Gasparic, CEO and co-founder, Fairmart)

Current solutions are a poor fit for the way physical retailers work

Singapore and beyond

Just recently, Fairmart raised US$1.5m worth of funds in an oversubscribed seed round, co-led by Quest Ventures and Entrepreneur First. The funding has been earmarked for the expansion of the Fairmart team, as well as its infrastructure, amongst others.

Fairmart has a presence in New Zealand and Hong Kong, but since relocating in 2020, it has focused largely on Singapore and it plans to keep its eye on the market in the next year.

In Singapore, the company has so far partnered with Hop Shop Craft Beer Store, Golf & Leisure, Mobile Works Solution, and more than 70 other retailers. Whilst that is the case, the startup is looking at expanding outside of Singapore, particularly in Thailand and the Philippines. He explained in particular that an “enormous” opportunity lies in the Philippines as retailers have larger distances to cover which makes it harder to straddle through logistics.

“The local search problem where people want to understand does this mall have this product or does this store have this product? You want to know what’s available in [the Philippine] communities and that information needs to be surfaced,” he said.

Beyond expanding into new markets, Fairmart will also zero in on developing the data they have to enable local retailers to better understand their customers.

“On the data side, we see that our customers really just lack good data to make business decisions off of and that’s going to be a key vector for us to be able to productize the data that we have and make it accessible and understandable in a way that allows our customers to make business decisions,” he said.

Fairmart also continuously updates its product to ensure that it is modified according to their clients’ needs. For instance, it has integrated with POS System, allowing it to automatically update inventory levels to Fairmart. It also revamped its admin page to make managing orders, and updating product availability, pricing, and store setting all possible with just their phones.

Further, the company has made it easier to set up product collections, where stores can set a name for a certain collection and add multiple products at once. Fairmart noted that using the collections feature has led to a conversion rate that is 16% higher.

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Lakshmi Mohanbabu has a project called “To the Moon and Beyond” that features 3D interaction cubes rendered as NFT

A brand new canvas: Why more artists are jumping into the NFT space

Entering the space allows an artist to earn more through royalties each time their art sells.

Singapore-based Artist Lakshmi Mohanbabu would, like any artist, earn her income from selling an artwork in the traditional way. Whenever the artwork was resold she would not earn anything. Now with NFT versions of her artworks, everytime the NFT is traded she earns an additional fee. For artists like her, the ability to keep receiving a fee for artworks already produced in the digital realm is welcomed additional source of income.

Mohanbabu said artists can get a percentage of a future resale of their NFT-minted artworks because they are allowed to impose a royalty fee.

“In traditional galleries, when my art is sold to a client and I make, say a hundred dollars, that’s it. If that client resells my artwork for a million dollars, it’s of no benefit to me as an artist,” Mohanbabu said.

“In the NFT space, I get to earn from the subsequent sales of my art. If it is resold for a million dollars, I’ll get 5% of that. I’m assured of revenue every time my art sells again,” she added.

Mohanbabu said she also likes that she gets to track where her art goes or who the current owner is.

Compared to traditional physical artworks, artists also get to reach a wider audience in the digital space, said Mohanbabu.

This was echoed by Tokenize Xchange CEO Hong Qi Yu, saying that artists can leverage the internet to connect with a lot of buyers, unlike when selling traditional art in galleries which is constrained by physical locations.

A stroke of challenge

Whilst the gains from selling NFT art seem tempting, Mohanbabu warned artists of challenges that come along as they enter the space given that it is relatively new and unfamiliar territory for many buyers.

The first hurdle Mohanbabu had to overcome was to identify which platform she should sell her artwork on. From experience, she suggested that artists choose a platform that is multicurrency since a lot of buyers are not yet familiar with cryptocurrencies. Her current project is with a Dubaibased multicurrency platform Virtua Advanced Solutions.

Mohanbabu added that it is equally important for artists to choose a platform where they can easily mint their artwork. An example of this is ElemintNFT, the brainchild of Hong.

ElemintNFT simplifies the minting process of an artwork by simply uploading it on the platform, without going through the hassle of creating smart contracts, Hong told Singapore Business Review.

A smart contract is an agreement between the seller and buyer of an NFT executed through computer codes, something which may be difficult to do for traditional creators who are unfamiliar with the technical know-how.

The other main challenge to entering the NFT market is how to

In the NFT space, I’m assured of revenue every time my art sells again

stand out, given the sheer volume of art that is already in the space. One way Mohanbabu overcomes this is by making digital counterparts of her physical artworks, which could then be translated and transferred into the metaverse.

Currently, Mohanbabu is working on a range of artworks based on her shoe designs. The collection will include actual shoes, 3D models and prints of the design, and a book of all the prints which will also have a counterpart in the metaverse. This also involves a collaboration for printing Mohanbabu’s shoes with the Singapore Centre for 3D Printing (SC3DP), Nanyang Technological University.

Whilst you can buy the physical painting and 3D models of the shoes, you can also buy the same book, shoes, or paintings as NFTs in the metaverse—so you actually have a shop in the metaverse. Your avatar [in the metaverse] can also wear those shoes,” she added.

Mohanbabu also has a project called “To the Moon and Beyond” that features 3D interaction cubes rendered as NFT. The project accompanies her artwork “The Cube of Interaction” which has been sent to the International Space Station on 19 February 2022 where it will remain for ten months and finally go to the Moon by 2025.

“What’s interesting is that, since the physical counterpart of the NFTs will be at the International Space Station, the buyer of the NFT can look up in the sky and say that they own the work of art that is flying above them,” she said.

In doing the space and shoe projects, Mohanbabu said what she had in mind was to create art that not only bridges the gap between the traditional and digital spaces, but also art that has international appeal.

“The buyers of NFT art are very different from the buyers of traditional art. For an NFT buyer to see value in your work, you have to be completely different,” she said.

Interactive art

One of the most appealing and celebrated types of artwork, not only in the NFT space, but also in the art world in general, is interactive art, according to Mohanbabu.

In Hong Kong, brand tech group, Gusto Collective, is amongst those leading in the creation of interactive art. Earlier this year, it was able to auction off an NFT art titled “Drowning in Love,” created by their meta-human project, MonoC, which sold for $189,000.

Apart from being created by a meta-human, what made “Drowning in Love” unique was it was created using a technique called “generated data art.”

“We created the foundation of the art which consists of MonoC floating on a pond, looking up to the heavens. Then we have flowers covering her. The idea is, she’s dreaming about what falling in love feels like and, because she’s a virtual human, she has actually never been in love,” Aaron Lau, founder and CEO of Gusto Collective, told Singapore Business Review.

“What we did then is we created an algorithm that controls the blooming of the flowers, the movement of the waves, and so on. This algorithm is powered by the actual auction data during the seven-day period. Every click on the auction site, every look at a piece of work, it’s collected as a data point. If you happen to bid on a piece of art—doesn’t matter which piece of art—it becomes a data point,” the Gusto CEO explained.

“We use the different data points. One set of data points controls the waves, another set controls the flowers. The artwork becomes complete after all the data points are collected at the very end of the auction,” he added.

Lau said the idea behind the artwork was really to bridge the connection between the investment in and creation of art. In July, Gusto Collective also launched a collaborative art piece for the Hong Kong government called “Garden of Eden,” where visitors can digitally grow flowers.

“On-site, you will have to download an app to experience the art. When you turn on the app, you will see a seed on your phone and you will be given instructions to plant the seed on the ground that we’ve created. You can then choose a cyber flower to be planted. You will see the flower grow right in front of the eyes until it’s fully bloomed. Once fully bloomed, it will fly up to the skies of Hong Kong,” Lau shared.

Success in NFT space

Whilst having unique art can give artists a boost in the NFT art world, Lau advised those planning to enter the space to do some sort of digital marketing around the art that they create.

“Often, Instagram, Twitter, and Telegram are being used as the information channel. But, from my understanding, Discord is where all the crypto folks aggregate. You need to market it to a discussion forum that focuses on NFT art,” Lau said.

Mohanbabu, for her part, said the key to achieving success in the NFT space is a mix of appealing artwork, a good platform, and an element of luck.

“It is also good to know what is trending and follow that a little bit, but not completely because it’s good to set your own trends,” she said.

Lakshmi Mohanbabu

Hong Qi Yu

Aaron Lau

For an NFT buyer to see value in your work, you have to stand out

Artists get to reach a wider audience in the NFT space (Photo: ‘Drowning in Love’ by MonoC)