Chipolo - a Lingohub Global Champion

The vision of Chipolo is a world where you never waste time searching your keys and your phone, and where your lost luggage always finds a way home. Inspired by all things misplaced and powered by a chip'n'app approach, their story began with the launching of a Kickstarter campaign in 2013.

They have come a long way in the previous 6 years and Nika Kramžar, Chipolo's CMO, shares their journey with us today.

Where did the initial idea for Chipolo come from? How did you decide to act on the idea?

The story about Chipolo began with 6 friends that are now co-founders of Chipolo. Each of them has a different background - from web developers, to hardware engineers, designers, and economists. They hang out and discussed if they should do something together business wise. One of them was always late for the meetings, and he always said he couldn’t find his keys, his wallet, his bag. So they thought about it and found out misplacing things is actually the most common problem of people all over the world. And they decided to solve it - and that’s how the idea for Chipolo was born.

Chipolo got its first funding through a Kickstarter campaign back in 2013. Why did you decide to try Kickstarter? What would you advise others who are considering a global audience?

There was a great idea about a product that will solve a problem almost everyone has. But there were no funds to actually execute the idea and push it to the market. Kickstarter was very popular back in 2013 and it was the perfect solution for us. If you have a great idea and you are looking for funds and some marketing push, Kickstarter or similar platforms are excellent. But nowadays you have to push even harder because there are so many products on the crowdfunding platforms, that you have to break through the noise there.

Chipolo comes in 3 shapes at the moment: Card, Classic and Plus. They all connect to the Chipolo app. What was the biggest challenge in optimizing the app to specific markets?

The greatest challenge was of course localisation in terms of language. We had to find a good solution that would work well with our development flow. It’s not just translating the app to a different language and end of story. We are constantly developing our app, do optimisations, fixes, which means we regularly add a few lines of text, and every time we have to take care of all the translations as well.

In addition, it is possible to introduce user's device to Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa. There's also an option to use Chipolo as a shutter button. Why did you decide to include these features?

The selfie button came out of fun. We thought ok, Chipolo helps you find your belongings and your phone. Could it also do something more fun? One of the team members suggested the selfie button, because there is usually a problem with group selfies - it’s hard to capture the whole group just by holding the phone in your hand. And selfie sticks are really awkward. So we came up with an idea that Chipolo could also be a remote shutter for your phone’s camera. Because you always have it on your keys and you usually have your keys with you, so it’s a very convenient solution.

And about the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa - assistants are becoming very popular all over the world. It’s a trend that now everything works with home assistants, so it was the only logical thing for us to do. Follow what users are doing and enable them to use Chipolo in this way as well.

Since the Kickstarter campaign in 2013, Chipolo has grown a lot. What is your team working on at the moment?

Currently we are working on two new products. One is Chipolo DOT - our strongest Bluetooth tracker. With Chipolo DOT we are bringing our users what they told us they want - a louder, longer lasting tracker, with replaceable battery and a light that will make it easier to find things even in the dark.

The other one is Chipolo GO, a new generation LTE tracker, awarded with CES innovation award 2019. Chipolo GO will solve the problem of lost belongings, it won’t have a limited range like Bluetooth trackers do - you will be able to track your most valuable belongings like car, bicycle, expensive equipment, luggage at any time and place. It’s the next step from GPS tracker, because it uses 4 different technologies for tracking (GPS, LTE, Bluetooth and WI-FI), which enables seamless experience for the user.

Chipolo community helps users find lost items even when their item is out of range. Could you tell us more on how you connect people all over the world and why is it important for Chipolo?

Chipolo community is a layer of protection in cases when people lose their items. Because of the limited range of 200 feet (60m) Bluetooth trackers are more efficient when it comes to misplaced belongings or cases when we leave something behind and we have to find out where we left it. If someone actually loses the item, Chipolo community can help. It means that even when the item is out of range, you can turn on community search and if another Chipolo user comes near your item, the system will mark the location in the background and the owner will receive an update with the current location of the new item.

Chipolo is available in more than 200 countries. How important was localization for your expansion? Which countries are you planning on expanding to next and why?

To make the best possible experience for the user, localization is extremely important. In this way he can interact with the app in his language. We are present in 200 countries but our app is currently available in 7 languages. We are constantly working on localisations and we cover the biggest markets for us.

How did Lingohub help you get where you are now? What is your favorite Lingohub feature?

Lingohub helped us and is still helping us to manage the localization of our app. The greatest thing about Lingohub is that it saves a lot of time. It is so much easier to manage multiple languages because the original texts updates are automatically imported to Lingohub and then the translations are automatically pushed into our app. It’s also a lot easier to communicate with our translators and to check their translations. It makes the whole workflow manageable.

Images courtesy of Chipolo