Source: Sarah Dewey, Seattle Business, November 2011. WCTA Member Point Inside helps you navigate the great indoors.
In February 2009, having worked to solve outdoor location problems for mobile phone customers calling 911, Seattleites Josh Marti, Jon Croy and Brian Wilson decided to conquer the unmapped indoors. Their company, Point Inside, provides an indoor geolocation platform that has been applied to shopping malls, big-box stores, airports and even hospitals.
Used in a smartphone app, Point Inside’s platform helps shoppers find stores or, better yet, items inside those stores. These capabilities have already been tested by Meijer, a Midwest big-box retail chain, in its own app. The Point Inside app downloads coupon and promotional information and can be used for virtual checkout. If a store has a promotion on one brand of cookies, a customer can learn about that promotion through his or her handheld device, find the item and receive routing information to where it is shelved.