Noble Technologies

In 2011, Corning released a conceptual video called "A Day Made of Glass," a widely viewed look at a future filled with connected surfaces. Peter Bokoff remembers the interactive mirror in the bathroom as the piece that caught his attention. That idea stayed with him and became the basis for what would become Noble Technologies, a Calgary company focused on changing how people interact with their environment.

The team built a prototype and then put it on the back burner for a couple of years. They restarted with full commitment once clients showed interest and they could settle on a pricing model. The flagship product, the Eye Mirror, is sold to retail and hospitality businesses for $2,500 to $15,000 depending on size and configuration, and customers also pay a monthly software fee of about $300 per mirror. Bokoff said the company's gross margin on hardware is around 40% markup over cost. Revenue was split roughly 70% one-time hardware sales and 30% recurring when the interview took place, with a stated goal of shifting toward recurring revenue as more units enter the field.

The company also funded its early work through grants. Bokoff said it raised about $1 million roughly two and a half years before the interview and had over $800,000 in grants and other financing, mainly from national and provincial programs including NRC and IRAP.

Early revenue came from one-off projects that Bokoff admitted were time-consuming and not very profitable, with first-year revenue of about $75,000. Growth then moved to larger retail and hospitality accounts. Bokoff described a pattern of pilot deployments, often starting with a staging mirror, before expanding. He said the sales cycle for new clients runs six to 12 months. A large international retail pilot in Amsterdam was in progress, with the retailer operating over 700 stores. Some of the largest revenue came from custom API integrations; one first deployment included about $250,000 in back-end integration work.

The company's narrow focus on a single product was a deliberate choice. Bokoff said the Eye Mirror is "all bread and butter," and pointed to research that people spend about 18 minutes a day looking at mirrors. Keeping the company to one flagship product and one clear sales motion let a small nine-person team concentrate on deployments. The main drawback was a long sales cycle and heavy upfront customization, which made hardware revenue lumpy. The team was also working to add a point-of-sale integration with Shopify and Lightspeed so merchants could show inventory on the device.

At the time of the interview, Noble had sold about 10 mirrors, had more than 10 customers and installs, and had generated over $1.2 million in total revenue since 2014. The 2016 target was to double the prior year's revenue, and Bokoff said the company was on track. The business is still in the transition from one-time hardware sales toward recurring software revenue that Bokoff sees as key to scalability.