This post is an update on a previous interview we did with ishBowl CEO, Zack Parker. Zack and his colleagues have made the tough decision to pivot their startup action sports video platform and take their company in the direction of a B2B model.
Many companies start as one thing and transform into something completely different. ishBowl is no exception. They launched their action sports video platform on web and mobile last February and had quite a bit of success. ishBowl allowed their users to create a customized video feed of high quality video content by following their favorite athletes, brands, filmmakers, and media companies. ishBowl had inked a deal with Nike and had some of the biggest athletes, brands, and agents on board. Traffic was building. On the surface, everything was going great. On the inside, they needed to build their revenue. Beyond advertising, the team had been developing more interesting and powerful forms of monetization.
One in particular changed the direction of the business altogether.
Today, ishBowl is helping businesses create customized video playlists inside of their locations based off the brands that are sold in their businesses. These businesses simply give ishBowl a list of the brands that they sell and ishBowl’s technology automatically aggregates these brand’s video content from the web. Then, ishBowl uploads the video content to the business’s TVs each night through a device called a Raspberry Pi. ishBowl is a subscription service that is targeting verticals such as: retail chains, restaurant chains, convenient stores, grocery stores, drug stores, hotels, etc.
ishBowl’s CEO and co-founder, Zack Parker, mentioned the void in the digital signage market, “Companies tend focus on the hardware and the software components of a digital signage rollout. However, they forget that creating or scheduling the content on the screens is full time job. It’s like saying that all you need for a social media campaign is a computer and Facebook, but you are leaving out the main part of the campaign… the social media manager. Our service acts as the social media manager (providing content), but for a digital signage campaign.”ishBowl took their core aggregation technology that they’d used for their consumer platform and applied it to brick and mortar businesses. Similar technology, better use case. Similar technology, bigger market ($15B+). Now, ishBowl has the opportunity to power the televisions in your favorite sports retail chains, restaurants, bars, etc. Seventy-five percent of all purchase decisions are made in store so ishBowl’s subscription service allows these businesses to increase sales at the point of purchase, control their brand across the entire chain and provide a service that communicates directly with the consumers.
Gutsy, yes. Smart, they hope so. Exciting, without a doubt.
Do you know a business with televisions that could utilize the ishBowl service? If so, drop them a line at info@ishbowl.com.