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Digital agency Autumn01 pivots to launch ‘one-stop software package’ to streamline competition process

The founders of Sydney-based company Autumn01 have pivoted their business away from being a digital agency and launched a suite of software to simplify the process of creating competitions.

Autumno1

Andreas Fung and Raz Szaplinski wound down the agency over the past two years to focus on launching TPAL, a one-stop software package allowing agencies and brands to streamline the cumbersome process of setting up competitions.

Fung told Mumbrella: “We didn’t want to sell time anymore, we wanted something more transactional based. But we wanted to stay in the industry and we knew this was a known irk for people, and we’d had this idea for 10 years.”

The agency was wound down over 18 months to allow staff time to find other jobs, with the duo remaining with one developer to help create the new platforms, which they hope will go global.

Fung said the idea behind TPAL – Trade Promotions and Lotteries – and the associated Randomdraws.com website service were the complications of setting up competitions for games of chance in Australia.

“Each State has its own regulations. It’s a nightmare. You talk to anyone in the industry and they hate this, it’s a waste of their time,” added Fung.

He said it could take up to a day for people to fill in all of the required parts to apply for licences, a task which is often shunted off to agencies by brands, but their system turns it into a 15-minute process, including a ‘wizard’ allowing people to look up easily what paperwork they need to do.

Andreas Fung - Partner - Autumn-01

Fung: “We’ve positioned ourselves as doing the industry a favour”

“Even if only one State is applicable it’s still a bit of a nightmare as you have to understand the rules and how to fill things in. What we’ve done is simplify things significantly by creating one tool that has all of the State regulations, where you fill in one form and it gets everything you need.

“It can also automatically generate the terms and conditions which is a huge thing as the requirements for them can be huge.”

The system also tells people what they need to submit to each of the different States to remain compliant, both before and after the competition.

The service costs $130 to set up all of the permits, and $200 if the user includes the terms and conditions.

“We’ve positioned ourselves as doing the industry a favour and making it easier and faster and making sure (businesses) are more compliant. It’s not just doing this form quickly and cheaply, but making sure they are 100% compliant.”

He pointed to the example of Western Australia, which requires applicants to send terms and conditions to them to register the competition, which is something not often required.

“We didn’t want to sell time anymore, we wanted something more transactional based. But we wanted to stay in the industry and we knew this was a known irk for people, and we’d had this idea for 10 years.

“We talk in agency language not legal jargon, and we were the ones who had to fill in these forms on behalf of our clients, so we know what the pain points are from a marketing perspective.”

He said their research shows there are between 10,000 and 15,000 competitions registered with the various States each year.

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