Almost everyone is familiar with the concept of a kiosk, an interactive screen on a stand where the user can retrieve information, services or products in a simple, intuitive way. These kiosks are placed strategically in high traffic areas in retail.
The Business Fame’s January issue’s cover story is “The Most Trusted Kiosk Solution Provider in 2022” featuring Ideas & Innovations, LLC (I&I)
The Company
Ideas & Innovations, LLC (I&I) was founded by James Curtis, a successful entrepreneur who, over his fifty-year long career, has learned to restructure traditional practices in ways that make life more cost-effective and user-friendly for both businesses and customers. He has always been interested in finding a better way to do things. His kiosk company, I&I, is no exception to that rule.
Gift cards have been in the marketplace since 1994, and until now gift card distributors have traditionally kept to distinguishing between the physical retail cards and the digital cards without bringing the digital, next generation technology to retail to help drive the category, despite requests from the prepaid industry.
During James’ traditional holiday shopping spree back in late 2008, after waiting in line at the store’s cashier for
20 minutes to pay and activate his selection of gift cards, he realized that there had to be a better way to manage this category. He needed to find a way to help local businesses present a broader mix of gift cards while saving space in their stores and time for their customers as they shopped. Also, the current gift cards would not allow the purchaser to specify the exact amount (instead, they left the recipient with unusable balances).
James, who had always tried to use technology to make his many business ventures run efficiently, began to ponder how he could use technology to facilitate and enhance the in-store customer’s retail gift card shopping experience. Based upon his shopping experiences, the concept for the strategy and market application behind the Ideas & Innovations kiosk began to take shape.
James quickly formed Ideas & Innovations and assembled a team of marketing and engineering experts to create his next generation, in retail, consumer friendly gift and entertainment card self-service kiosk for retail with activation on demand features for physical, digital gift and entertainment cards.
From its onset, James Curtis worked quickly to capitalize on the market opportunity by assembling a team who had the retail expertise and experience to make the project a success. Donnie Bottinelli, former DayRunner, Inc’s COO and CSO, was one of the first individuals to join the team and champion the project. Other key team members include Tom Neale, formerly Head of Global Brands and Gaming with Blackhawk Network; and Madhu Koyya, formerly a senior technology officer with Walmart and Target stores.
A group of 5 level patents in 37 countries (so far) support the company’s kiosks and protect I&I’s interests in the national and international marketplace.
All of these assets allow I&I the opportunity to offer selected retailers a standalone, API friendly, self-service gift and entertainment (movies, gaming and e-books for instant streaming for rental or purchase) kiosk platform that provides consumers with a substantially broader mix of both gift and entertainment card brands. These brands have both physical, digital deliverables and exchange services to manage those unused balances on old or existing gift cards which can be consolidated and transferred to another gift card which can be used anytime or anywhere via I&I’s “Anywhere Gift Card”.
The I&I kiosk’s innovative consumer deliverables also allow our customers the option to pay with cash to activate gift cards on demand, stream movies, gaming and eBooks without membership requirements.
The I&I kiosk allows retailers to offer a much broader variety of gift cards (since they are digital) without taking up more space in their store. The I&I digital kiosk solution also solves a very real retailer challenge by maximizing profitability per square foot within a smaller footprint, as most retailers are now shrinking their physical space for prepaid entertainment and electronic card categories. This also means that the kiosk’s gift card offerings are never out of stock and offer them the same competitive profits as a traditional gift card display!
Added features of the kiosk allow customers to purchase or send a greeting card with audio/video personalized messaging or personalized greeting cards with their gift card purchase. The kiosk uses I&I’s targeted advertising for consumers to offer special promotions and couponing.
Retailers and market experts agree that the innovations that I&I delivers will prove to be true “market disruptors” and change the gift card industry for generations. I&I is launching their kiosks for testing in the market starting in January of 2022 with an expanded market launch planned for 3rd quarter 2022 and beyond. The gift card category will never be the same!
The Products and Services
Ideas & Innovations (I&I) leads the field with its gift card kiosk that integrates digital solutions into physical retail starting this quarter. This next generation of innovation will help bring consumers back to retail by delivering more products and categories, while taking up much less valuable space in stores. We at I&I are very excited to announce that, with our partnerships for digital gift card content, our kiosk will offer 1000 gift card brands which are never out of stock.
Our kiosks will greatly enhance the consumer experience by offering:
A much broader selection of gift cards printed on demand in store, along with full balance checks Entertainment, gaming, movies, and eBooks for instant streaming for rental and purchase (even for the cash customer) Personalized greeting cards with audio video messaging Exchange of unused gift card balances transferred to other gift cards or to our debit “Anywhere Gift Card” for use anywhere.
I&I also uses our proprietary targeted advertising technology on our gift card kiosks’ secondary screens that offer consumers numerous promotional options. These promotional programs are used to drive consumer brand awareness at retail with special discounts and couponing through our participating gift card brands. We are also able to offer retailers regional gift card programs targeting select “local or regional brands” (traditionally only offered in wholesale clubs during the holiday season) and, now, business-to-business bulk card programs printed on demand at retail.
This enhanced self-service, in store shopping experience supports our kiosks at retail as “market disruptors–” with gift and entertainment cards printed on demand and authorized in less than 25 seconds. Through all of our exclusive partnerships, I&I can now deliver best-in-class retail kiosk solutions across multiple categories with greatly reduced fraud. However, I&I is always open and looking for new partnerships to continue to enhance the consumer’s experience at retail.
