A trip to the hospital following an unfortunate event with contraband whiskey inspired former consultants Alexander Busarov and Yaz Belinsky to create an online marketplace of certified imported products; while simultaneously creating an open consumption platform, capturing data and championing commerce through its own blockchain-based loyalty system.

Unlike Kantar Worldpanel and other consumer analytics companies, Taeltech has enriched its marketing efforts with what-if testing to experiment with new ideas and campaigns. Unlike archaic receipt scanners for data collection, the start-up engages with the Chinese consumer through its own mini WeChat program and entices users by scanning with its Wabi loyalty points – which also serve as cryptocurrency.

Instead of keeping only post-purchase data, Taeltech can capture information throughout the consumer’s buying journey, from decision-making to purchase. Presenting as an ordinary e-commerce platform, users display behavior as usual, thus allowing Taeltech to run various tests without creating bias or compromising results in a tested environment.

“With us it’s a little different because we have a real sandbox ecosystem of users doing what they do on any other platform,” says Belinsky. Putting it in context, Busarov explains that Alibaba can get a full overview of the consumer’s buying journey, but only within its platform, losing visibility when offline at a corner store. “There is a saying, one plus one equals three – because when you connect datasets, you can learn a lot more.” enlightened Busarov. With Taeltech, each scan of a product’s barcode tells the story of what has been picked up, purchased, or supplemented by other products or channels, which becomes valuable information for manufacturers.

In addition to a rich database of consumers, Taeltech excels in in-depth social listening. From a body of text, they can define consumer tribes and trends to target based on specific needs to improve the effectiveness of product communication, enhanced by mapping relationships with competing brands based on of comparative mentions – and a ranking system, inspired by Busarov’s chess hobby.

“It’s a probabilistic model of how often we would expect particular chunks of text to appear in user comments … for example, if your campaign is well structured, it is very likely that users will speak little. almost the same way of your product. you want it, but sometimes interesting things start to emerge. Belinsky says. In one case, a Japanese manufacturer marketed their shampoo by highlighting its organic and natural ingredients, but thanks to Taeltech’s AI toolkit, the user’s social media comment reported low importance and low importance. low recognition based on these elements, but instead focused only on its Japanese origin and itchy remedy prompting the brand to shift its marketing focus to the latter.

Test and learn

Hypothesis generation is also another key product of Taeltech, measuring product reviews and understanding consumer engagement with the product e.g. conversion rates, time spent on the page, etc. and further segmenting consumers by tribes with current insight into market structure. In another case, Taeltech was able to help a dashi sauce manufacturer entering the Chinese market, which is largely dominated by local players with legacy reputations. Using NLP based on millions of data points to scrape recipe websites and social media platforms on how and why consumers choose one brand over another, his solution discovered that the high sodium content was a huge talking point, prompting the manufacturer to market as a safe. and a healthier option, also designing child-friendly packaging to target a new consumer segment.

Taeltech is currently actively working with the Japanese government to boost cross-border trade, with its most recent partnership with department stores Rakuten and Odakyu, to extend the shopping trip for tourists back to China. Now working with the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, together they operate the sake market where China leads with rapid demand, an export value of 5.8 billion yen (US $ 53.7 million) in 2020. With free trade pacts such as the Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, tariffs on sake imports can be eased or lifted to further encourage the export of sake. Taeltech here uses a combination of temperature sensing chips and QR code for generating feedback. Targeting discerning drinkers and premiumizing the sake market, this activity allows consumers to have visibility into the manufacturer’s supply chain while ensuring that the temperature remains controlled and constant throughout its journey.

Boost analyzes with Crypto

Despite the current regulations of the Chinese Personal Information Protection Act (PIPL), Taeltech somehow promotes the solution of illicit and excessive data collection by rewarding consumers in exchange for their voluntarily provided data. “Consumers are actually rewarded for showing the kinds of things they like, which helps companies create ways to market the product.” Busarov shares. With every review of a product, consumers not only learn about the product, but they also earn reward points for purchasing – a growth engine process for the platform. As companies typically keep CRM data close at hand, it becomes a siled approach where no data is shared, although in fact many in the industry can benefit from it. Taeltech has since developed an open consumption platform that makes data widely available for industry players to visualize channel comparisons and brand popularity in real time based on their own aggregated data from its platform. -form.

Very inspired by the founder’s penchant for Brave Browser and its Brave Rewards – which are built on Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) – Taeltech has created its own Ethereum-based token, Wabi, with a total supply of 100 million. For each Wabi loyalty point awarded to consumers, an equivalent amount in tokens is blocked and withdrawn from circulation and can be exchanged for more than 2,000 products available on their marketplace. It also fluctuates in value, prompting active consumer engagement. As Wabi adoption and user activity continues to grow, an increasing number of tokens are stuck in user wallets, decreasing the supply of circulating tokens.

Much of Taeltech’s solutions are consumer-powered, with a user base of over 100,000 users in 500 cities in China. While the crypto market is stereotypically traded by men, 80% of its users are women who unknowingly or have little knowledge of cryptocurrencies have become traders simply by making trades. transactions and interacting on Taeltech’s e-commerce platform. Belinsky also explains that the benefits of having blockchain-based loyalty points also make accounting easier, as loyalty points often become a liability on the balance sheet due to the difficulty of tracking. Whereas with crypto-based loyalty points, there is an external value that is defined by the market instead of being created out of thin air.

Creating a future of decentralized data

With more than $ 10 million in funding already, Taeltech seeks to expand beyond China, although it is already present in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. When regulators regard consumer data as sacred information, there is a shared value that can be created by consumers willing to engage in exchange for rewards. Having an open network and collaborative partnerships will only allow effective product marketing to meet consumer demands while improving transparency in the industry. In an age of limited travel, the Taeltech marketplace strengthens the legitimization of cross-border products and secures consumer confidence as manufacturers and brands gain insight into building the next competing product in the market.