Newcastle’s Tech Startup Screach Seeks £550,000 Through Crowdcube Initiative

Screach 1

Screach, a Newcastle-based tech startup, recently launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube to raise£550,000 to continue expansion growth and increase customer interaction.

Screach 5Founded in 2009, Screach is said to help venues such as retail shops and pubs to provide customers with a better experience by screening their own adverts during TV ad breaks. The startup shared:

“As we’re not a restaurant chain or gym with an easy to understand concept the best way to get a feel for how we make a difference is to watch our video above. We believe Screach is the future of customer communication and entertainment for venues such as pubs, retail shops, hotels and gyms – in fact, anywhere there are TVs and customers with smart phones. Screach can help these venues to increase customer satisfaction and drive sales.”

Screach has already boast customers such as Schuh retail and Marston plc. Explaining its concept, the company noted:

“Screach delivers a venue (such as a pub) their very own bespoke, intelligent TV channel via our Screach smart box that can turn under-utilised TVs into a powerful sales and marketing tool. This not only allows a venue to advertise food and drink offers and show interesting content to their customers (such as Premier League Highlights), but also has a smart element that uses data to dynamically influence the screen content and link to people’s mobiles to increase customer interactivity, which we believe makes the venue a more enjoyable place to visit.

 

Screach 2“So are we the only people who think that we can help? Fortunately not – we recently signed a 3 year agreement with BT, where Screach is now promoted as a value added service to over 24,000 BT Sport commercial customers. Screach can help these customers to get payback on the cost of their subscription sports package (currently costing pubs over an estimated £500m per year!).

 

“Since the BT launch, over 2,200 venues have signed up to have Screach TV installed within only 3 months. 1,100 venues already have a Screach Box installed, with a further 1,100+ venues in the pipeline. During this period, we have also signed a six-figure advertising deal, as Screach TV can also show third party adverts just like normal terrestrial TV and Sky.”

Screach 4The company then revealed that it has support from a group of investors that include:

  • Tom Maxfield: Former Director of Sage plc
  • Colin Willis: Founder of Hotspur Capital
  • Mark I’Anson MBE: Director of Venture Capital company NF Holdings Ltd
  • Sir Peter Vardy: Former CEO of Reg Vardy plc
  • Alistair Arkley CBE: Founder of New Century Inns and former CEO of Century Inns plc, and
  • Brian Lowe: Former Director of New Century Inns and Century Inns plc.

Funds from the Crowdcube initiative will go towards building out the team to drive sales in independent and managed pubs, and in the call center for customer service. The money will also be used to further investment in the Screach product and technical platform, to deliver incremental value and scalability.

During a recent interview with Chronicle LiveScreach founder and CEO Robert Rawlinson explained:

Screach 3“Screach helps pubs by empowering them to drive footfall, increase sales and interact much more intelligently with today’s digital-savvy and mobile-connected generation. We’ve had a very successful year and chose crowdfunding as a way to engage with pub-goers and give them the opportunity to not only share in our success but help accelerate the deployment of our product into pubs to make them better places to visit.”

So far, the campaign has successfully secured nearly £180,000. It is set to close at the beginning of January.


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