The product is made from intelliPaper, a triple-layer substrate with an embedded chip connected to USB tracers on its surface, to enable users to include videos, presentations and websites for recipients of their business cards to interact with.
Customers can then use back-end software to analyse how their cards are being used and to edit the content of each.
The product is designed as a lower-cost alternative to the USB stick that can pass through standard mail sortation systems.
“Back when the technology was invented in 2008, the cheapest you could buy a USB stick in mass quantity was $3 (£1.80). Today it’s $1.75-$2 and our product can be manufactured and supplied at retail for 50c,” said Andrew DePaula, chief executive of SwivelCard.
SwivelCard has so far attracted investment pledges totalling more than $88,000, and the company has said that it will expand its logistical operations in Europe, to bring the cost of the ordering down, should the campaign secure $100,000.
“We do sell products internationally already; it’s a case of people calling us and we’ll supply it,” said DePaula. “But once we’ve hit the $100,000 mark the price will start to come down.”
DePaula added that he expected this target to be hit imminently. “It could be a day but will probably be less than a week,” he said.
The company has also announced that it will start looking for a partner to produce a dedicated swivelPrinter with once the $100,000 goal is reached. This printer would be a 'prosumer' model suitable for low-volume producers, including print businesses, said DePaula.
“We have a solution that’s viable that we can supply, but we’d very much like someone to come up with something even better,” said DePaula. “I’d love for it to be someone like HP or Epson. That’s a long shot but not impossible.”
Of other possible candidates, he added: “Brother makes a lot of speciality printers of various sorts – that’s a possibility. And there’s the possibility it could be someone like OKI Data.”
DePaula added that currently printers wanting to offer swivelCards to their customers needed to print these on an industrial machine from the likes of Xante or Intec, due to the product’s thickness.
He added that, if printing the cards in sheets, a laser cutter would also be needed, and that SwivelCard plans to launch an industrial laser cutter designed for this purpose early next year.
The swivelCard Kickstarter campaign has so far attracted more than 700 backers, from 20 countries worldwide.
“This is a tangible product that seamlessly connects you to the digital world,” said DePaula.
“Moo makes business cards that have built-in NFC. Those are neat but not many people have the reader. You give someone your card and you don’t know if they’re going to be able to read it. Ours have NFC, QR and are USBs, so they do it all.”
