NZ’s Blunt partners with Tile for an ‘unlosable’ umbrella you can track via your phone

NZ’s Blunt Umbrellas has teamed with hot US startup Tile to create an unlosable brolly.

In truth, it’s more of a sales partnership. If you buy one of Blunt’s new Blunt + Tile umbrellas, you get a Tile thrown in. The canopy of the umbrella has a special slot where you can stash the trackable Tile.

Blunt managing director Scott Kington tells NBR the new Blunts are the first product collaboration Tile has undertaken.

Tile’s eponymous product is a scrabble piece-sized tile that includes a Bluetooth 4.0 transmitter and receiver (Bluetooth 4.0 being the latest and greatest Bluetooth standard, notable for its battery life; a Tile should have at least a year’s worth of power).

The idea is after you download the Tile app to your iPhone or Android, you can track any object to which your Tile is attached (for example, car keys, wallet, or in this case umbrella).

And you certainly don’t want to lose a Blunt brolly. NBR loves the way these high-tech brollies live up to their indestructible reputation but they are not particularly cheap. The two new models sold with a Tile cost $125 and $145 (Tiles are sold individually for $US25).

If you do misplace it, there are a couple of options for locating it. One is to get the Tile to play a tune. This can be triggered if you’re within Bluetooth transmission distance (15-30m depending on obstacles) and of course whether you’re within earshot. Otherwise, your Tile app, which constantly polls the location of your tile, can show you on a Google Map where it last “saw” your brolly. Trying this out, I found it accurate to about 30m. Tile put my umbrella on the wrong side of Customs St but that would still have been a good hint that I’d left it at work or the café directly across the road.

There’s also a third option: other Tile users can locate your lost item as they walk by (this all happens in the background, Tile says, with personal details kept hidden). This crowd-sourced scavenger hunt tactic could be effective if Tile builds up a lot of customers.

IPO?
When the NZX launched its new NXT exchange late last year, NZX chief executive Tim Bennett name-checked Blunt as a listing candidate.

Certainly, the Auckland-based company has the makings of a hot IPO contender. Although it hasn’t released any financials, it has sold more than 100,000 of its high-tech, high-price brollies, seemly sussed Chinese manufacturing and US retail channels, and earned rave reviews from Wired to the Wall Street Journal.

But speaking to NBR last night, its managing director indicated that wasn’t on the cards.

“There’s no serious movement in that direction at the moment,” Mr Kington said.

“We are growing nicely and within the current capabilities of our manufacturer – and a few of our more established markets, especially Japan, have seen significant recent growth and awareness.  So we will ride this wave for a little longer.”

Read NBR’s broader profile of his company in The Blunt approach.