It started with a card I lost at the barber.
I had nine cuts out of ten. I lost the card. I started over from zero.
My name is Ben Schalom KAMGA. I live in Victoriaville, Quebec, and I built Aster because that small frustration hid a much larger one, on the merchant's side.
What I learned talking to shop owners
When I lost my card, I lost nine visits. But the salon lost more: it lost track of a loyal customer, and never knew I had almost come back a tenth time.
Talking to coffee shops, barbers and car washes around me, I found the same thing everywhere. Everyone knows loyalty matters. Nobody has a tool to measure it. Existing solutions required either an app customers would never install, or a terminal to buy, or a commission on every sale.
So I took the problem from its smallest possible angle: counting. Not running a register, not collecting money, not advising the merchant on their offer. Just counting, correctly, and showing it to the customer on something they will not lose.
Four decisions I will not change
They cost features and some revenue. They make the product defensible.
The customer installs nothing
An app the customer must download at the counter is a loyalty program that never starts. The card opens in the browser they already have, in ten seconds, with no account and no password.
The least data possible
A first name and a phone number. No email address, no date of birth, no shopping habits resold. What we do not collect can neither leak nor be misused.
No commission
Taking a percentage of sales would have been more profitable. But it would have meant looking inside the merchant's register, and that is not my place. A fixed subscription, known in advance, full stop.
The limits are written down
What Aster does not do is as visible on this site as what it does. A merchant who discovers a limit after signing up is a merchant who leaves, and rightly so.
Where Aster stands today
Aster is in its testing phase. The merchant app is available on iOS, version 1.0.3. There is no Android version yet: I would rather say so than let you look for it on Google Play.
The first businesses are testing right now, and their feedback changes the product every week. If you run a shop and the idea speaks to you, your opinion carries real weight at this stage.
- Available: iOS app, customer cards in the browser, Google Wallet and Apple Wallet, four program types, promotions, statistics.
- Not yet: Android app, multi-location management.
- Hosting: data is hosted in Canada.
A question, an objection, an idea?
I am the one who answers. Write to support@joinaster.app, including to tell me something is wrong.