Fast growing WECHEER rethinks Loyalty

Did you ever wonder why loyalty cards and promotions are only offered by retailers but not from your favorite brand? Enthusiastic WECHEER CEO Karim Choueiri loves Lindt. And buys their products every week, from COOP, the Kiosk at the train station or from the Denner next to his home. But he never received anything back from Lindt, not even a free chocolate.

This is where WECHEER, the digital loyalty card for brands, kicks in. As a consumer you join by opt-in from your favorite brand and earn points and rewards directly from that brand, regardless where you make your purchases. As a brand for the first time ever, you have the ability to turn your advertisement into performance marketing, directly connect with your end consumers, understand them and reward them based on offline purchases.

What makes WECHEER platform unique is its technology that can capture those transactions across any point of sale without the need for integration, and data policy, based on a transparent brand opt-in system so users don’t receive any 3rd party advertisement.

Empowering brands since 2017

As a marketing manager for 11 years working on one of the world's biggest coffee brands, it was quite frustrating for Karim Choueiri to spend 100 of millions on marketing and sales budgets without being able to know one single consumer. Actually only supermarkets and retailers had the ability to connect with the consumers. So as a brand owner Karim simply had no way to know who purchased the company’s coffee, measure the impact of his marketing activities, or build loyalty based on consumer retention and repeat purchases.

That's what motivated WECHEER’s creation in 2017. Cofounders Karim Choueri and Aurèle de Bosset wanted to give brands the first ever solution that can allow them to directly connect to their consumers at the moment of purchase, whether they purchased from a supermarket, online portal or restaurant.

Since its launch, WECHEER has been consistently gaining traction on the international scene. In 2018 the startup launched its first tool to capture offline consumption with the smart bottle opener. By 2021 the team deployed both its consumer and staff reward programs for brands across 3 global markets: Brazil, Vietnam and UAE. In 2022 WECHEER launched its first program in Switzerland with Coke, and expanded to 6 countries.

Since the roll out of Receipt Scanning and Dynamic QR in 2020, the startup has gained the ability to serve any brand in the FMCG/CPG industry. As long as it is sold in third party retail. Anheuser-Busch InBev, the group behind Budweiser and Stella Artois, has been one of its longest partners, but as of the last 2 years, WeCheer has welcomed on its platform some big names tells que Mars Wrigley, Nestlé, Pernod Ricard, Coke HBC and a world leading tobacco brand .

Scaling-up to support brands further

WECHEER is set to scale-up its sales to seize three market opportunities. As Karim Choueiri explains to Statupticker.ch, distributors and supermarkets are focusing increasingly on their own brands, putting pressure on the remaining FMCG brands. Google and other advertisers are moving to block 3rd party cookies by 2024, removing the brands’ ability to retarget consumers effectively. The CEO is also convinced that with the expected incoming recession, brands will need to build loyalty with their consumers and focus on retention. From a tech perspective the team is continuously improving its app and technologies to offer the most frictionless experience for its users, and deliver high accuracy data for its customers. Headquartered in Lausanne, WECHEER has a globally distributed team of 35 people.

(Eugène Schön)
Photo L-R: WECHEER cofounder Karim Choueri and Aurèle de Bosset