Monday, October 30, 2006

IntelliMat, the floor digital signage company, closes $5M investment capital round

From this press release:

IntelliMat, Inc., a Roanoke, Va.-based company specializing in providing dynamic digital floor displays, announces today that it has closed a $5,000,000 Series A round of investment. The investment is provided by NewVa Capital Partners, LP, and an affiliate of Third Security, LLC, both of Radford, Va., and SPI Investments, LLC, of Roanoke, Va. Carilion Biomedical Institute also participated in the financing.
The money is going to be used for marketing purposes and to "provide working capital for operations," which suggests that the 2-year-old firm isn't yet cashflow positive, despite owning the only patents for floor-based digital signage. Of course, there's always the tantalizing (and optimistic) hope that they closed some big deal and now need the money to ramp up production, but I guess we'll have to wait to find out.

For those of you who haven't seen these things in the flesh, they're pretty interesting... low-profile LCD displays in a relatively thin rubberized bezel designed to be laid flat on the floor. So instead of passing by a ceiling- wall- or shelf-mounted display, you can literally walk all over it. I'm not sure that this is necessarily a good thing, but there's still a large amount of momentum behind companies who are deploying signs everywhere and anywhere possible, as some kind of bizarre real-estate land grab.

Past stories about IntelliMat include:
IntelliMats to test in-floor digital signs
CircuitCity testing digital signage in store floors

Tags: IntelliMat, digital signage, dynamic signage, floor displays, retail media, store media, advertising

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