I am the father of 12 year old twins so I've lost touch with the "baby market" but a conversation with one of our business advisors who is about to become a father for the first time triggered some flashbacks of what that time was like and got us both thinking of another use for QR Codes and our product, Tapple. The advisor, Adam and his wife had visited the Drool Baby Expo and came away a little bit shocked and with a whole lot of questions.

I can recall no other time in my life where I was so overwhelmed and unprepared than when my wife was expecting our twins. Sure, I'd seen a ton of babies and was even related to a few at the time, but it is a totally different game when the baby is (or in our case, babies are) yours. Looking back on those days I find one of the most stressful parts of the whole lead up to their birth was figuring out what "baby" stuff we needed to take care of them. Which crib is best? Make sure you get one that hasn't had an issue with its slats...Which stroller? Side-by-side or "stacked" configuration? Car seat? Diapers? Bottles? Bouncy seat? ExerSaucer? Swaddle blankets? And the list goes on... And the choices are endless...And the feature comparisons will make you dizzy. I quickly came to realize the awesome power and magnitude of the Baby Industrial Complex. Names of companies I'd never heard of and products I'd never seen before became part of my everyday lexicon. In the hopes that dollars spent had a direct correlation to quality of parenting, my wife and I bought just about everything we came across or were told we "had to have."

I could see and hear the same stressors with Adam that had thrown me for a loop 12 years earlier. But what stood out to the both of us was that, as highly analytical individuals who seek out as much data as possible before making a decision, he and his wife left the Expo disappointed that they weren't able to learn enough. They were overwhelmed by the number of products they encountered but also very frustrated that they made very little progress on deciding what they needed. It seems at most every turn they were unable to talk to anyone because booth staff were preoccupied or when they were able to speak with someone about a product, the individual didn't seem all that well informed. They felt this most when looking at strollers and playpens. They are confusing, multifunctional contraptions that are often more complexly engineered than a BMW and are definitely harder to operate.

What Adam kept thinking as he watched poorly executed product demonstration after poorly executed product demonstration was how much better the experience would have been if he and his wife were able to walk from booth to booth and scan QR Codes on the products they thought looked interesting and review specifications, read use cases and watch proper demonstrations of the products in action, and then save the products they liked, directly on their phone. He also noted that he would have gladly given his contact information and some particulars about when their baby was due, etc. in order to be contacted later or receive a coupon towards the purchase of the item. There is nothing particularly novel about this use case but the need is real and would help both producers and consumers. Our product, Tapple is designed for just this type of use case and many others using QR Codes, NFC, and geolocation with no app to download or account to create!