With health activity tracker business Fitbit listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in June, and then growing in value by 50 per cent, the founders of Squeaker are hoping to do just the same with canines.
The company’s Buddy dog collar allows owners to keep track of their dog’s movements using a monitoring chart, with GPS technology providing a way to locate a missing pet.
Squeaker has created 17 different incentives to attract investment. Its most lucrative, for investors contributing $8,000 or more, includes a visit to the company headquarters in Melbourne to crate a bespoke concept product utilising custom designs, materials and graphics.
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Furthermore, its creation of “geofences” means an outline can be drawn on a map, with notifications sent to an owners phone and the collar glowing in bright colours if the dog moves beyond this perimeter.
A customisable smartphone-based dashboard has been created to provide temperature, activity, social alerts, calendar reminders, LED shortcuts and location information.
A description on the Kickstarter campaign reads: “Up until now LED collars have been a one colour proposition. With Buddy we have a stack of individually programmable LED’s that allow the collar to display an almost infinite amount of unique lighting effects and colour combinations. These can be chosen via our iPhone app or via the Apple Watch app.”
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Squeaker was set up by Chris Forcucci in May 2014 after he noticed how hard it was to see dogs walking along shared walkways at night. His first product was called Poochlight, and was a simpler LED-illuminated collar and lead.
“We have accounted for absolutely everything we could think of with our goal from extensive development and testing down to shipping, logistics and packaging with a solid plan to have bullet-proof Buddy’s delivered to our customers within 12 months,” the company said.
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