App hooks users up with activities
Christchurch entrepreneur Emily Heazlewood and two colleagues have made their first foray into marketing a new smartphone application to help people organise social gatherings.
Equally significant, the app gives local businesses an opportunity to showcase their attractions and offerings.
Heazlewood described her Romer app as a ‘‘Tinder for activities’’ because it allows users to organise people to meet at dining spots, bars, or any favourite place such as a local beach or river.
She has been able to devote time to develop the app and the marketing for it over the past year with the support of the Vodafone Xone Lab, an open plan office space in central Christchurch for young entrepreneurs.
The app was developed with assistance from Christchurchbased Smudge Apps, whose principals have subsequently become investors in her company App Corporate.
The app is free for users while businesses pay a fee to place their information and advertisements.
But as well as calling up the range of commercial activities, users can create their own ‘‘Romes’’.
For example, if the aim is to ask friends along to a beach they can search the app first to see if there is already a reference, or upload their own picture and location. The suggestion is then sent to the users’ specified group of friends and they can respond to say if they are coming or not.
Heazlewood created Romer to take the difficulty out of arranging plans and activities and to help foster shared experiences.
‘‘Millennials get a bad rap for being more disconnected than ever before, despite having more tools available to us to communicate with each other,’’ she says.
‘‘I wanted to create a platform that gets people out there doing stuff with each other and encourages them to discover new things.’’