NYC Digital Signage Startup Digital Social Retail Plans IPO

October 20, 2017 by Dave Haynes

You don’t see a lot of IPOs being floated out there by digital signage companies, but that’s what NYC-based Digital Social Retail is taking the necessary steps with the SEC to do.

The three-year-old company put out a press release saying it has been qualified by the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) pursuant to the Regulation A+ Tier 2 framework, which is open to both accredited and non-accredited investors. Digital Social Retail also intends to file an application to list its Units on a US Exchange.

The Company expects to issue between 1 million and 2 million Units, each consisting of one share of Common Stock and one Warrant to purchase one share of Common Stock (the “Offering”). The Common Stock and Warrants will be purchased together as a Unit in this Offering, @ $4.25 The Company expects to raise gross proceeds of between $4,250,000 million and $8,500,000. It intends to use the net proceeds for sales and marketing, as well as research and development purposes.

These are the filings, if you are into that stuff.

“The rapidly evolving Internet-of-Things marketplace provides our Company significant opportunities to expand our business into a variety of verticals,” says Sylvain Bellaiche, Founder and CEO. “We believe the capital we expect to raise from this offering will enable us to ramp up our business as we continue to enhance our proprietary digital convergence platform and its appeal to existing and potential new customers. With restaurants, cities, hotels, retail chains and universities already using our digital signage, Wi-Fi hotspot and beacon connector technology, we believe there are many opportunities to expand our presence in this growing market.”

People involved for some time in the digital signage sector will know this company is not exactly a major player, and is looking to generate investor interest to drive sales and marketing in a crazily crowded, hyper-competitive market.

Digital Social retail says its software “allows customers to simultaneously manage push notifications for Wi-Fi signage, and on any mobile device, entirely from a single platform. The “Social Retail” platform is a personalized, geolocated and real-time advertising platform already used by major global brands. The strength of the Social Retail platform is that it is the only one that combines an Adserver, a CMS and a predictive analytics tool on the same console. The Social Retail platform collects large volumes of data from local consumers, information that has become key and that will be increasingly essential and valuable to any marketing strategy. It is marketed by monthly license or paid for by results.”

I have seen the company at a few trade shows, so its people are definitely out there trying to drive business. The website has a Who We’ve Work With page, but a lot of the companies listed are not retailers. The featured case study is for a chain of vape shops (e-cigarettes, if you are boggled by vape). The link to that case study is a 404 error, which would be a good thing to fix before asking for money.

The company’s Linkedin page lists 14 employees, and describes itself as having between 11 and 50. I THINK the company’s roots are actually in France. Both the CEO and CTO have very French names, and the latter is based in Paris.

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