The Futuristic Cleaners: How AR-check Brings Cutting-Edge Tech to Low-Skill Work

Welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, Jim James. Now, there are some entrepreneurs who see trends and see opportunities well ahead of everybody else, but they also take a little bit of a risk that they might be going down the wrong path. My guest today saw the impact and the possibilities of augmented reality over a decade ago and got worldwide patents On a solution they built for their domestic cleaning business. Amazing. My guest today is in Frankfurt. He's going to tell us about an augmented reality service that he's created to help cleaning and the cleaning industry. Tell us about how he is trying to cross the chasm, is introducing a whole new category of tech to a relatively low-tech industry. Martin Cuzzillo is joining us from Frankfurt. Martin, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Jim.

Look, it's a pleasure because this is an industry— cleaning, domestic, commercial— that historically has been seen as kind of relatively low skill, low value. But as we found through COVID, was absolutely essential, that buildings were shut down if they were not clean enough, and everyone had to go and re-clean, and certifications came out and so on. Augmented reality. How have you brought this very high-tech solution to a low-tech environment? How are you doing that and why is it going to make a difference to everybody?

Well, first of all, there are 2 reasons. You know, the first reason is that cleaning business is a low-cost business. So there's not much money available to invest in some kind of support. And the other one is actually the problem with the cleaners and supporting them. You know, there's a big gap. You have to trust cleaners no matter how good you teach them how to clean. You always have to rely on that, that they will clean in a proper way. And coming back to the costs is it's, as I mentioned, a very low-budget business. On the other hand, The organizational costs are very, very high because unskilled cleaners provide the situation that cleaning is done quite problematic, quite often badly, poorly, and this causes extra work every time. And also the organizational organizational efforts in the cleaning business itself. Most stuff is made by, you know, by people, and there's a huge amount of money which is invested by the end customer even before the first step of cleaning has been done. So there are so many— there's so many— so much potential to like to save money in the processes which, which work besides the cleaning. And you— and actually, I was searching for a solution by my own to like digitalize my own company. I have a cleaning company since about 25 years, and I was desperately searching for, for, for solutions even worldwide. I was visiting different exhibitions which are specialized, and they also have like specialized software companies in cleaning business. But actually everybody told me that this is crazy what I'm looking for, and it is impossible, uh, um, to, to, to like, um, to close this gap. If you are able to close it, it's like the Holy Grail. But, uh, actually every expert told me this is impossible. Then I understood I have to create something by myself, which what I did, and I was working on a concept for a couple of years, but it ended a few years later recognizing that what I'm doing is some kind of science fiction. It's very crazy until I was sitting in front of the TV and I saw, how you say, a program about Google, and that's why that's the first time I came in connection with with the Google Glass and the technology augmented reality. And this was the moment where I recognized that actually what I'm searching for is already there. It's augmented reality. And my idea connecting with this technology would actually allow me to solve this, to close this gap, which is quite huge, which is quite expensive, this gap. And when you can close it and you can change it from manually to digitalize these processes, you can save extremely much money and automate this business. So as we know, cleaning business is made by cleaning companies. Everything is done very traditionally since over— it hasn't changed like for the last, mainly for the last 100 years. Still things are done quite manually. There are some digital support, but they don't actually help the cleaner, and they do— they're not able to track the cleaning. They cannot do nothing in real time, actually, you know. And they even take you more of your time because you have to, you have to, how you say, use these programs. And what we are searching is that the cleaner actually is not always very skilled and doesn't speak the language, so we don't want him to use our system. He just has to do what the system shows him. So to make things quite easy, you know, and to make it cost efficient.

Martin, an amazing sort of digital disruption to a traditional industry that you're pioneering there with ARCheck. From a practical point of view, then people are wearing the glasses and the, for example, the mops, the gloves that they're using, the vacuum cleaners. Do those have sensors of some kind that communicate so that people know? How does that work from a practical point of view or a technical point of view?

Yes, that's right. So we use sensors because it's not possible, like, to patent a software. There must be some kind of connection. To something, to some kind of hardware, which in this case are the sensors. So our main patent actually is based on the ability to measure a connection to the surface. So actually, normally you use augmented reality by showing something in front of you, which is, like in the air and you can look at it and you can make some gestures. But our patent is based on, on, on touching the surface. So that's a quite broad patent which allows us to, to protect the ability for cleaning based on this patent. So we use, we use sensors, for example, when we clean with, with a cloth or with a sponge, we have the sensor sensors in the glove, in the cleaning glove. And the cleaning glove, using the cleaning glove is, you know, shows you then that there is a connection to the surface. And also, of course, for when you, for example, clean with a mop, you have the sensors in the mop which recognize that the mop is touching the floor. And since The measurement is working in real time. You get the information in real time. So you actually— the sensors communicate with the glasses, but you can also use a smartphone. So you can also see it on the smartphone as well in case people don't want to buy at the beginning some glasses. So they can also use their smartphone. It works as well. And actually, well, That's what it's based on, on touching the surface and being capable to measure this by sensors.

Martin, that's brilliant. So really, we've talked about the smart home for a number of years. I used to work for Philips in Singapore on the concept of the smart home. This is back in '98, '99. They were already starting to think about intelligent devices. And of course, with the Internet of Things, we have smart fridges, for example. And now with what you're doing, you're bringing a, you know, AR into another level of actually the work that's being done. Martin, you, you managed to get a worldwide patent. Congratulations on the, on the technology. You're building out some prototypes. Could you just tell us about the go-to-market strategy? Because it sounds as though you've, you've got the concept, you've got the use case, you've protected it legally. And now you're building out some prototypes. So could you just share with us the steps that you're taking to commercialize the ARCheck?

Sure, sure. Yeah, so we're still in a quite early phase. We now have finished the prototype phase. That was very important for us to learn if what we are actually trying to do is possible. And so that's So we have a very good result there. It is possible. And this year we are starting to create the first product, which we will launch in the beginning of 2025. And we started to create a plan for the marketing to find customers, but we were quite lucky because many big companies were searching for solutions and quite a lot of them found the path to our website. And so we have already a huge amount of potential customers which we are talking to and we are already working with 2 very big companies. So we are actually not concentrating so much on the marketing because we already have so many requests that we are now actually concentrating more on the development.

So Martin, you said that people have, you know, just found ARCheck. But how did that happen? Because if you haven't done a lot of press and you haven't done trade shows, you've got a website which has got some very nice videos on it, for example. But How did people come to you?

Well, yes, so it was by, how you say, co-accidentally. I was searching for investors and it was quite difficult. And at that time, augmented reality was not so popular. Actually, people didn't know what that is. And so I just came up with the idea to send some information to a platform, internet platform, which is called Deutsche Startups. They're specialized in startups and innovations. And so they called me and said, that's a great idea. We like what you're doing. And they interviewed me. And so they posted a first article about ARCHEC on the internet. And actually what then happened is that not only private people were interested in ARCHEC, but also quite a lot other news platforms specialized in, for example, hotel business, cleaning business, in different industries. And they also interviewed me. They liked the fact that augmented reality is not used here by some astronauts or some, how you say, pharma industry, but cleaners. They thought it's very crazy that such a high-tech, uh, uh, system is used by such a low technical business like cleaning business, and they loved it. So, um, at that time, uh, many of articles, uh, were shown, uh, in, in the internet about, about ARCheck, about our startup, and that's how quite a lot of companies, uh, from worldwide actually contacted me and told us about their problems and that they see the solution in our system. And by the way, this is how I came up to create a startup, because before that I was looking for investors to create a solution for my own business. But since I recognized that so many companies in the world are interested in this solution, I, um, after some time I decided, okay, not keep it for myself but create a startup and allow everybody use it.

That's a great, that's a great idea. You say the businesses are maybe at least equal size or may even outgrow the, the existing cleaning business that you've had for 25 years. And what a great, a great story that you could send that to this Deutsche startup platform, and there was just such native interest in what you're doing. Of course, that is the very essence of where something goes viral, where an idea goes viral, where it's new, easy to understand, and you're plainly fixing a problem that everyone recognizes is there.

Yes.

And with a technology that really is of the time right now. Martin, when you are going out to Investors. Just tell us a little bit about your strategy there, because obviously this show, I love to find people like yourself that are innovating. Tell us though how you're positioning the company to make it attractive to investors.

Well, yes, so, uh, we are, we are, uh, we are raising money now, um, uh, for the next, for the, for, for this, uh, um, actually final uh, final rounds to, to create the, uh, the product. And what we are raising is now, uh, in total will be about €5 million. What we now need for the next, uh, next year is about €2 million. Um, so what we do is now we, uh, we started to contact investors. We already have some investors on board. Um, and, uh, yeah, and, um, We are, how you say, they can invest in our company, in our startup, in giving us, how you say it in English, I'm sorry.

Venture capital. Yeah, venture capital. Yeah.

Yes.

And Martin, when—

Shares for that.

And when you're going to the investors, what's the vision? What's the promise that you are giving to the investors when it comes to ARCheck?

So, well, it's about mainly said it is to automate cleaning business, to make a platform-based solution where cleaning can be used totally digitally. And what will not change for a long time is that the cleaning will be done physically by cleaners. But you need some kind of real-time support to, to support this frontline worker because he's actually the asset in all of the business. When it comes to cleaning, it's the cleaner which is the main asset in all of that. Not the cleaning company. So what we actually offer is a solution to, to make cleaning much more cost-effective, efficient, and, and more reliable and in a higher quality.

Right. And presumably there's accountability too, because if you've got some tracking going on, then if that data is going up to a SaaS platform somewhere, the cleaning company and the client can both get a real-time analysis of the work taking place in, in their facility, um, so that they can see if they need to do more or less, you know, and, and really to start to get some, some measurement into what traditionally has been an unmeasured space.

Yes. Yes, sorry, what was your question, Dad?

Yeah, so just in terms of the proposition to the investors, that's amazing that you're, you're going out. I'm sure that's going to work really, really well. What's your sort of timeline, Martin, for ARCheck to start to have real product into the market that maybe goes to trade shows, for example, uh, that people can start to see working?

So, well, okay, so our first product will be on the market in the beginning, as mentioned, in 2025. And, but it will still take a quite long development phase over the years, you know, to continue. But we will have already a very effective system in less than a year on the market. And I believe The next year will be also the year where we'll present our company and our solution on different exhibitions. So yes.

And will you, as a strategy, Martin, is the plan to work with, if you like, distributors in other markets or to, if you like, have a sort of a direct-to-market approach to find clients, do you think?

So I think we have more than enough potential clients now. So how it will look on the long term, I believe it will be more of a platform-based business where customers can directly book their cleaning and we will be connected to a platform which also provides cleaners. And what we see also in the long term, it's not because we want it, but it will like put out intermediaries because ARCheck allows direct support in cleaning and organized cleaning in a much more precise way than, for example, I can do it with my company, with my cleaning company, as I work in a traditional way. So on the long term, it will be a platform-based solution comparable like what Google is for internet, what Amazon is for internet, how you say—

Internet retail, maybe.

Retail, yeah, right.

Martin, it sounds like you've got a very, very exciting proposition there with ARCheck, and that's ar-check.com, by the way. Martin, as an entrepreneur, Would you say there's something that you'd give as a piece of advice? Because you've plainly had your own businesses for a long time, 25 years. You and I have had a similar sort of innings when it comes to running a business. What would be your advice to anyone that's thinking about being an entrepreneur?

Well, first of all, to being an entrepreneur is it's very important that It's very helpful that, that you are specialized in, in what you're doing, um, because, um, there are so many things happening, uh, which you like— it would be good to know upfront, uh, so you can be prepared, um, whatever it is, uh, whatever kind of industry it is. And the other thing is, uh, when you are creating a startup and you need money, you of course need long breaths too, because things can become very complicated and difficult. And yes, that's about it.

Yeah. A nice expression to have a long breath, as if you— because you are going for a deep dive, aren't you, when you're an entrepreneur?

So, you know, I mean, in my case, we made a due diligence at the time. I was looking to to make the patents. And we did the due diligence on how long it will take till augmented reality be a serious, uh, technology on the market. And, uh, it's been told to me that it will take a few years because the first patent I launched was in 2014. So there was nothing in the market, uh, which is like bringing some kind of money or has some kind of potential. But things happened quite fast, you know, only a few years later, the first glasses came on the market, the game Pokémon Go came on the market, then the first filters on smartphones came on the market. So I was quite lucky. It was a risk to bet on this because patents are quite expensive, especially when they are internationally. So I paid over— we have 3 patents now. I think we paid something about €400,000 for that till now, maybe a little bit more. Um, so we had to, we had to wait a long time, but we, we, we used the time to, um, to create, uh, to, to work on, on, um, on our system, on our solution, uh, and to get prepared and prepare for the, uh, further patents as well. So we have 4 new patents in the pipeline, and actually our main business, uh, is creating systems because it's not actually— ARCheck is only a result, one result, you know, but things can change and you can fast lose grip when you concentrate on one solution. Our main business bases more on being very creative and creating new, innovative, state-of-the-art, disruptive systems, which ARCheck is only one part of it.

Sounds like you're going to be a busy man cleaning up, Martin. Many, many, many opportunities. If you want to find out more about you, Martin Kudzilo, where can they do that?

Well, I invite you to visit our website, which is www.ar-check.com. And yeah, there we have information to get in contact with us, with me. So welcome, Martin.

Thank you very much indeed. And of course, I'll put Martin's website address as ar-check, um, that's AR as in augmented reality, dash, then check as in C-H-E-C-K.com. Martin, thank you for joining me on The Unnoticed Entrepreneur today. And you've been beavering away, um, in an area, and I think that you are going to be very, very noticed Very, very soon. So thank you for joining me before you become too famous to come on my show.

That won't happen. I will always come on your show. Thank you very much, Jim.

Thank you, Martin. I shall hold you to that because I think we've seen the beginnings there of an amazing, amazing business because to take high-tech into low-tech areas, to support the unskilled with creating skills will create jobs for people, accountability, and as Martin says, will improve efficiency As well. So really delighted that Martin has come on the show because I'm trying to also find innovators and people that have taken some risks and that people are really putting all their chips into new tech. And I think that we're going to see with ARCheck, those chips come back and it's going to be a great gamble. It's going to pay off for Martin big time. So I do encourage you to go to his website and also to share this with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. Especially if you know someone that might be interested in investing in the business. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating.