A little more than a year ago, FlockTAG was a dream of a couple of entrepreneurs looking to reinvent customer-loyalty programs. Today it's a start-up with technology that can be found in numerous small businesses across most of Michigan's major cities.
The downtown Ann Arbor-based start-up raised $250,000 in angel funding last year to create a technology platform that works as a universal loyalty card for a broad range of retailers and other businesses. That technology is now being used at 100 retail businesses in Detroit, Novi, Ann Arbor, East Lansing, Bloomington (Indiana), Champaign (Illinois) and Columbus. It also has 100,000 card holders who have used them 1.2 million times.
"We learned you can never be customer-centric enough," says David Lin, CEO & co-founder of
FlockTAG. "How can we provide better user experience? How can we provide more value?"
FlockTAG is looking to expand further throughout the Midwest later this year. It is now focusing on creating more customer engagement on how best to deliver customer data to businesses without overwhelming them with information. "It's really a careful balancing act," Lin says.
FlockTAG has expanded its staff to a dozen employees and two interns. It recently made four key hires of sales and technology professionals. The 1-year-old business is also working to raise a Series A round of funding worth $1.5 million. It's presenting at the Michigan Growth Capital Symposium next week to help hit that goal. Lin hopes to wrap up its Series A financing this summer.
Source: David Lin, CEO & co-founder of FlockTAG
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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