Bitreel — Taking Your In-Store Experience Online
By: Bram Berkowitz
Tags: Reality, Shopping, Consumerism, Online Shopping, Augmented Reality

Bitreel — Taking Your In-Store Experience Online

The Problem

Returns are one of the biggest challenges retailers face today. Shoppers return about 40% of items they buy online and longer return times due to COVID-19 are putting intense pressure on businesses. Bitreel is using augmented reality to help retailers increase conversion rates and reduce returns.

What The Company Does

Bitreel allows shoppers to self-navigate virtual tours and digitally overlay products into their own homes. After businesses capture footage with the Bitreel app, the company creates an end-to-end, photo-realistic digital twin of a business’ store. These visuals are complimented with ambisonics and haptics to create a truly immersive experience. Replicating a store digitally allows customers to shop online as if they were in the physical store and it allows customers to add items inside a digital showroom. Replicating products online helps customers better visualize them and understand what they are getting, which therefore increases conversions and reduces returns, while also creating awesome content for social media. The founders were inspired to start Bitreel because they personally missed the in-store experience when shopping online and realized the recent developments in augmented reality can provide shoppers with a clear representation of products. The goal is to give shoppers their digital senses back.

The Market

Augmented reality is expected to grow to around a $2.5B by 2023 as brands are looking to replace their physical experiences with digital ones. It will be important for businesses for which the in-store store experience is paramount, as well as for furniture and home decoration stores, other visually appealing businesses. There are estimated to be around 850k furniture and home decor stores globally. Based on research from Bitreel’s business development team, about 25% of this market will be in the scope for the Bitreel solution due to store size, budget, and visual character. Bitreel hopes to convert around 5% of those in-scope retailers and then expand to other segments of the retail market. There are other players who provide similar products. Obsess and Matterport both use 360-degree photos, but do not include 3-D or hearing and touch. Pure 3-D modeling companies like Threekit and Vertebrae use computer-generated imagery to create a 3-D model of an item, but not entire experiences.

Business Model

Bitreel will charge per square foot and per 3-D model. For a home decor showroom of around 4,000 square feet that includes 10 e-commerce enabled products in the experience, the company would charge an average of around $10k. Average account size is currently ~$8k per physical location and this should increase with higher value licensing deals with larger brands and platforms. A pilot test the company is developing for a global furniture retailer could be $3M of revenue if they decide to roll this out to each one of their stores. Future revenue streams could include a take rate on sales within Bitreel experiences and monetizing data based on views inside the portal.

Traction

Bitreel is working with retail brands such as BoConcept and Hellman-Chang, and has seen promising results from its product offerings. One of its clients is seeing a 1.8x higher conversion rate on items in the 3-D experience, while other retailers have seen 20% lower returns for products that were viewed in 3-D prior to purchase. Another retailer found its 3-D app made users 11 times more likely to buy products. The company has two pending patents on its capture process and a pipeline to protect its intellectual property. Bitreel was also recently accepted into MassChallenge’s 2020 cohort, which starts at the end of June. The company closed a pre-seed round of $200k in January.

Founding Team Background

Bitreel founders bring work experience from Amazon, Tencent, and Tripadvisor and is made up of technical experts in augmented reality and spatial computing.

What They Need Help With

Bitreel plans to raise a seed round in October, and is also looking for intros to brands, particularly large furniture and home decor retailers. The company also seeks an advisor from a global brand in the furniture and home decor space. Connect with the Bitreel team.

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