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We have our next guest here. Hello.

Hi there.

How are you doing today?

I'm very well. Thanks. You?

Doing very well go ahead and introduce yourself to me.

Okay, great. Well, thanks first of all for having me on the show today. My name is Judith Bank and I am Head of Global Marketing for Sure Petcare.

Alright, and tell me about Sure Petcare.

Okay, so Sure Petcare, as the name implies, is a pet technology company. We've been attending CES for a number of years. We're very sad, unfortunately, to be attending just virtually this year but we have been attending and exhibiting over many years, the suite of connected pet technology products that we have developed for cats and dogs. We're really excited this year that we have a new product, the latest product in our Connected Ecosystem, which is a water bowl, Connected Water Bowl for cats called Felaqua Connect.

Okay, I believe we've had you on the show before? I'm pretty sure.

You had Yeah, I wasn't sure whether you'd remember but I'm sure you have a blur of interviewees, come see. But yes, a few years ago, and we were talking about Connected Feeders that time, I think.

Yes, I believe you talked with Todd Cochrane on that one?

That's right, yeah.

Yes. I was behind the desk for that one.

That's right, yeah.

I knew I recognized the name. Fantastic. So, we talked about a feeder before a super cool product. So where does this fit into the ecosystem?

Okay, so this, as I mentioned, it's part of the same ecosystem. So we have a single Sure Petcare app, that enables you to run a number of products that work sort of interactively and together within the same ecosystem. Previously, we were talking about our Connected Feeder, we also have a couple of Connected Pet Doors as well that link into the same system, and then now we have added the latest product Felaqua Connect. Now, as I mentioned, it's a Connected Water Bowl. In fact, I have it here, if I can quickly hold it up to the camera here, so you can take a look. You can see, it's a nice, shallow open water bowl here, where the cat drinks from with an airtight reservoir that's feeding into the water bowl here. It connects to the app so not only is it delivering, nice fresh water to your cat, in a very cat-friendly design, it is also monitoring what they're drinking as well. If you have more than one pet, it's going to identify each pet in the household using either their standard identification microchip or if they're not microchipped, then there is also a collar tag that you can hang on their collar to use to identify them instead. So if you have multiple cats, that's not a problem, it's going to recognize which of your cats is drinking and each time they visit the bowl it's going to monitor how much they're drinking, how long they're drinking for, how frequently they're drinking. So obviously, how much your cat is drinking is a sign of their health. It makes sense that making sure they are eating and drinking properly is important but particularly for cats, actually knowing what's the normal drinking behavior for your cats is really important because a change in drinking compared behavior can be a really key indicator, an early indicator that maybe there are some changes going on with our overall health and well being. It's the kind of thing the busy cat owners are not always going to notice straight away. Particularly if you have more than one cat, you may see the water in the balls going down, but you don't really know exactly how much is being drunk and which pet is drinking. But actually, a changing drinking behavior is or can be an early sign of conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease, even hypothyroidism, which are all fairly common conditions in cats, particularly as they begin to age. It's just another really nice part of the ecosystem to monitor that additional indicator so that you can be really really proactive pet parents in terms of understanding how your cat sort of normal routines and behaviors are changing as they age. So you can potentially then evolve their care to meet those changing needs as well.

Okay, so a couple of things first, I had forgotten about the microchip thing until you said it. I remember that being my favorite part of the product second This is definitely designed by the same team.

Absolutely. It's got a certain look about it, hasn't it? Yes, you're right.

Absolutely it does. You held it up and I'm like, Oh, that looks familiar.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, for us, these are devices that are gonna sit inside people's homes in their kitchens and the living areas. It's where you are, day in, day out. We want them to look beautiful, as well as be functional, as well. So yeah, absolutely a lot of time and effort goes into the design.

Yeah, and I love the look. I remember thinking that I think it was 2020. You came to the show?

It was Yes, that's right. Two years ago.

The reason I remember that is because you were actually in our CES 2021 opening video.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh, that's great.

Because the product was really interesting looking and so it made for a really cool, like, quick-hit video in our intro, so I saw that design so many times while doing editing last year.

I'm sure you probably, what you're particularly remembering is this sort of curved hoop around the back here. I mean, that's actually the microchip reader, that's the RFID reader and so obviously, our feeders have a similar style of reader. It's somewhat of a challenge when you're designing for pets, because, you know, they don't always understand why certain product elements are there, we have to design the product to be really user friendly, not only for pet parents, but for cats, for dogs, and certainly, when it comes to cats, we know that felines can be a little bit fussy.

No.

We know they don't always like putting their heads into enclosed spaces. So we've designed this to be as sympathetic as we can. So that, you know, still having some nice open space here so the cat can see through to the back and then as I mentioned, working to make the bowl as cat-friendly as possible. We actually worked with leading Veterinary and animal behavior specialists to design, pretty much every element of this product to be as appealing as possible to cats.

Sure and the fact that commander wharf could be at home standing behind that because it definitely looks like the bridge of the enterprise is a benefit for me.

Absolutely. Well, another nice thing about it in all seriousness, is that it's battery-powered. So you're not going to have to be limiting it to being there remains power supply so that not only gives flexibility to the pet parent, they can place it anywhere in their home that they like to but again, as I mentioned, some cats are quite pithiatic particular about where they want to eat and drink. So you can place it in a nice, quiet, comfortable place in the home for them, where that's going to encourage them to visit the drinking station and stay nicely hydrated.

Understood. Yeah, that's super cool. So is this? I gotta ask this first. So it's battery-powered? So how long does the battery last? Is it a replaceable battery or a rechargeable battery? How does all that work?

Yeah, sure. So are all of our products, the batteries last for at least six months. We always say at least. In practice, it's quite a bit longer than that. It does have a low battery indicator and certainly, when you're in the app, you can check on all of the battery statuses of all of your devices to see where you're at and you will get warnings as well when the battery's running low on the products. Unfortunately, they are not rechargeable at the moment. They are just standard replaceable batteries, but there's certainly prints plenty of battery life there and plenty of warning when they need changing.

What kind of battery is it?

It's an AC cell battery.

Okay.

So one of the larger cylindrical ones.

Easily acquired?

Easily acquired. Yeah, definitely. We make sure that all of our products have very standard size batteries that are easy to obtain and change.

Excellent, because obviously, that's not always the case. Right? If it were two button cell batteries, radio shacks, not around anymore, it'd be a whole lot harder to find those.

Right, right. Yeah. They're just very standard battery size.

Fantastic, and is this product on the market already is coming soon.

It is available on the market already. The other thing I wanted to just quickly mention, I've also mentioned the ecosystem of products that we have, and they all do require an additional internet hub as well. We have had a little bit of fun with the design of that. I don't know whether you remember it from when I was on the show before with the feeder connect, but we have designed it to look like a little cat with flashing ears. So you do need that home hub to connect all of the devices in just one hub per household.

Okay, and what kind is it? Do they all wireless wirelessly communicate back with that hub is that and then that goes out to the internet? Is that how that works?

Yes, exactly. So you plug the hub into your internet router, and then it will then communicate with each of the devices that you have within your home. So you can connect up to 10 devices through the same internet hub and then once you go into the app, as I mentioned, you can view all of the devices within the same app. You can also if you have multiple pets, you can look at all of their various different behaviors, comings, and goings, eating, drinking, all from a single pet profile. The other nice thing about the app is you can invite additional users to join your sort of pet household if you like. If you have pet sitters, family members, perhaps looking after the pets for you, they can all join in the fun and also have access to all the data within the app.

Got it. That's, that's really cool. So what kind of range does this hub have on it or how does that work?

So, so the hub, we do recommend, and I'm sorry, I've just realized being European-based, I'm going to quote meters here rather than feet.

That's fine.

We do recommend that where possible that the hub be placed within 10 meters of the device but you know, certainly, within most home setups, that's fairly achievable.

Okay. Got you. No worries about that. Now. I'm getting, questions from the chat.

Okay.

Is there a monthly fee?

There is no monthly fee. No. So it's a single one-time purchase of the hardware, so the device, the flat connect device, and then the hub, and then you're good to go? No additional subscription.

Perfect bad. I think that's gonna make a lot of people very happy. Well, I really appreciate you coming on and giving us information on the new products. If people want to find out about this and the rest of the ecosystem, how can they do that?

Yeah, absolutely. So if you would like to find out more, please do visit our website, the address is surepetcare.com. And that sure is spelled S-U-R-E petcare.com and you can find all the information there about the Felaqua connect that we talked about today as well as the other products as well.

Fantastic. Well, this is a cool product to go along with your previous cool product. That's really great. I am definitely going to go check out the rest of the lineup as well because there have been like you said, there have been other products since we last spoke. So that's super cool. Thank you for coming on and updating us.

Okay. You are welcome and thanks so much for having me. Great to see you.

Absolutely. Hopefully, we will be back together at CES 2023. Fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed. Absolutely. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Bye.

Bye.

TPN CES 2022 coverage is executive produced by Michele Mendez. Technical Directors are Kurt Corless and Adam Barker. Associate producers are Nancy Ertz and Maurice McCoy. Interviews are edited by Jo Mini. Hosts are Marlo Anderson, Todd Cochrane, Scott Ertz, Christopher Jordan, Daniele Mendez, and Allante Sparks. Las Vegas studio provided by HC Productions. Remote studio provided by PLUGHITZ Productions. This has been Tech Podcasts Network Production, copyright 2022.