Wriggle

Idea

Introduction

Wriggle is a mobile app that has been live for a month in Bristol, with 1,668 downloads. We have generated revenue of £4,276 and connected 456 customers with businesses. We have had great press coverage and a 100% net-promoter score from users.

All businesses, even the most successful, have unsold capacity. Wriggle is a simple mobile-app platform to allow them to sell this at the very last minute at a reduced price. For users it’s a fun and spontaneous tool to find last-moment offers at high-quality local businesses. It harnesses advances in smart phones, secure payment systems, and geo-location to create an opportunity for consumers to make these last-moment purchases.

Wriggle has been working in the food & drink sector to-date, and are looking to expand to other sectors and have already received approaches from a hot-air balloon company, a theatre and even an osteopath, to name a few. This is the tip of the iceberg of what Wriggle can do to help businesses fill their capacity. With its mobile-app in place, Wriggle has the technology to scale to a national level quickly and to take advantage of this huge opportunity.

I encourage you to download the app from iTunes or Google Play store and see how simply and easily Wriggle works for customers in Bristol. We are very proud of it, and are receiving great feedback from users on the design, and simplicity of user interface.

Intended impact

Wriggle has an opportunity to transform last-moment trade, efficiency and waste. Adoption of mobile e-commerce is still in its infancy, and there will be winners in this new marketplace. There is a growing understanding of the significant power and impact which mobile commerce will have on the efficiency and sustainability of businesses. In fact, we believe that over a relatively short timeframe, the profligacy which waste represents will be viewed as unacceptable from the perspective of both buyer and seller.

Unlike offer sites which have become ubiquitous, Wriggle can focus on opportunities for successful businesses, not offers or discounts for "desperate" ones. By focusing relentlessly on quality, locality and exclusivity, Wriggle has already proved the existence of a substantial market.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Since successfully fundraising through SEEDRS in incubation (via Webstart Bristol) Wriggle has turned the original concept of Wriggle's founder, Robert Hall, into a viable, working mobile app which is generating revenue, and growing its buyer and seller base rapidly.

In the first month after launching the app, Wriggle has attracted over 1,400 registered users, followers and app-downloads.

This is without a marketing spend and solely through word-of-mouth and unpaid-for media. From a core base in Bristol, Wriggle has already had registered interest in 10 cities, and wishes to expand throughout the UK and internationally.

Monetisation strategy

Wriggle charges the proposed offer direct to the consumer, and automatically pays the merchant keeping a 9.5% administration fee, from which a profit margin is generated. Wriggle has generated over 1,400 registered users, and a gross profit over the first 8 weeks of operation. Wriggle leverages the rapidly expanding mobile economy to use a more efficient system to match buyers to sellers at the last moment, driving efficiency which has not been possible until now.

Use of proceeds

The objective is to fund necessary expansion and growth to profitability within 9 months.

We have put together a core team of an Operations Director and two junior employees as we expand into other cities across the UK. We will also incur monthly development costs as we add features to the app.

The summary use of proceeds is expansion to at least 20 additional cities in the UK. If overfunding permits us to, we will expand beyond the UK, and consider international test-markets.

Wriggle used the proceeds of SEEDRS Round 1 to develop the mobile-app, create sales and build a healthy sales pipeline among merchants in Bristol, in order to prove the model. Now that the concept has been achieved and a significant amount of development has taken place, the funding will be used to enable Wriggle to grow.