A 6-month Feasibility Study in the topic SMEInst-10-2016-2017: Small business innovation research for Transport and Smart Cities Mobility was granted with the objectives to validate product/market fit for CargoBeacon in the two market verticals of transportation of industrial goods and medical substances. Additional objectives were to validate the economic feasibility of CargoBeacon by working with the business model fit of CargoBeacon and to develop and validate a mixed channel distribution strategy. Market validation was done by target customer interviews to understand key market requirements, additional requirements, standards and certifications needed and how integration into existing IT-systems best can be done. Market validation resulted in a number of action outcomes whereas some were done during the study and some remains until after the study. Today’s CargoBeacon logger is well suitable for the industrial vertical whereas additional sensor requirements exist for the vertical of medical shipments. Besides the need for product change the medical vertical has additional barriers. Extensive sets of requirements and standards, dictated by different authorities, were found making us decide to postpone market entry in the vertical of medical transportation. Additional requirements for positioning and automatic quick access to cargo KPIs lead us into a task for exploring possibilities of adding a low cost modem to CargoBeacon, preferably with the ability to also provide goods positioning (at least roughly). Emerging Low Power Wide Area Networking technologies promise both of these requirements but need further exploration. A mixed channel distribution was explored where direct and indirect sales are combined to plan for scalability while still staying in close contact with customers during product development and ramp-up. Several potential OEM partners were interviewed with the purpose of becoming indirect sales channels. These interviews resulted in additional requirement to the supply and production of CargoBeacon loggers and the access to portal based data.
