Many parents would welcome the idea of a fairly inexpensive tracking device embedded in the shoes of their children.
Those were the sorts of customers Patrick Bertagna, the chief executive and founder of L.A.-based Global Trek Xploration Corp., had in mind when he and his colleagues developed sneakers equipped with Global Positioning System transmitters. The technology was developed for people who care for those with the propensity to wander off, such as young children or patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other mental illnesses.
Now, however, months before Global Trek brings its $200 Smart Shoes to consumers, a potentially larger and more lucrative market is emerging. Global Trek said that it has received inquiries about its GPS shoes from news organizations exploring ways to quickly locate field reporters in case of a breaking story and from government agencies interested in using the technology to more effectively dispatch first responders to disaster zones.
If adopted institutionally, this kind of surveillance technology is certain to raise questions about potential encroachment of civil liberties.
“It certainly has a Big Brother aspect to it that’s a grave concern. You devise something for a benign purpose, but it ends up being used to spy on people or illegally tracking people,” said Elizabeth Shroeder, director of program support at American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “This product has grave privacy implications.”
Global Trek’s Bertagna, however, maintains that he’s not worried. Police cars, for example, already have tracking systems inside them, he said. Why not track the police officers themselves?
“Would I rather my boss know that I went to McDonald’s yesterday and Taco Bell today, or chance not being deployed quickly enough so that I can do my job as effectively as possible?” Bertagna said.
He concedes that some are uneasy about the technology. “It’s mostly the men who say, ‘Oh man, I don’t want my wife knowing about this,’ and women who say, ‘Where can I get a pair for my husband?'”
Personal Safety
For the most part, however, the company is targeting people concerned with the personal safety of loved ones, Bertagna said.
And “personal safety” is the magic word when it comes to winning people over on person-to-person surveillance, according to a 2006 Boston University study that surveyed 523 online adults across the country on the subject.
The study reports that 66 percent of Americans are comfortable being monitored by loved ones in case of an emergency, while 88 percent believe such devices should not be used on adults without their expressed permission.
More than half agree that parents who use such a technology are “concerned,” “cautious,” and “caring,” while only 34 percent considered such parents “overprotective,” according to the study.
James McQuivey, who conducted the student-led study as an assistant professor at Boston University, said he was surprised by the results. The students had selected the topic believing person-to-person surveillance would be a controversial topic that evokes fears of employers and the government abusing technological advancement.
“In general, people are very supportive of this kind of technology. All you have to do is consider the personal safety of the ones you love and all the government-inspired fears start to dry out,” said McQuivey, who has since left his post and joined Forrester Research as a vice president.
McQuivey said Global Trek’s new technology is likely to appeal to people in their 30s to 50s who take care of young children or older parents and feel time-stressed and heavy with responsibility.
“They don’t feel like they know what’s best for their child and older parents. They will look at this technology as one more tool to stay on top of things,” he said. “They will see it as a real solution, whether they really need it or not.”
Business and research consulting firm Frost & Sullivan is also optimistic about the future market for personal surveillance tools. Its market research report forecasts that “location-based service” will be an $8 billion industry by 2011, where nearly a third of U.S. users will pay for personal location service technology for security and social networking purposes.
An epiphany
Bertagna, 44, has launched seven companies so far, but he says his heart is closest to Global Trek because it began with an epiphany.
In June 2002, he had just sold a company that designs software for tracking supply chains. Bertagna was in a brainstorming session with four business associates for a new company concept when a wire story about the abduction of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart of Salt Lake City popped up on his computer screen. (The girl was later found alive.)
He called for a break because it didn’t seem right that they should be “figuring out how to get jeans from point A to point B when parents are agonizing about the loss of their child,” he recalled.
“It’s horrible,” one of the business associates said. “But what can we do about it?”
Without much thought, Bertagna replied, “Why don’t we just put tracking devices inside a kid’s shoes?”
The room fell silent. Bertagna closed the meeting and buried himself in research for two months, drafting an 80-page patent and a business plan, he said.
Four friends sent checks ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 with notes asking him to count them in. That was the beginning of the company, Bertagna said.
The company has raised $7 million between MultiMedia Technology Ventures in Laguna Beach and private investors. Of the 30-person company, 15 top executives, including Bertagna, have not been paid for five years.
During this time, the company has developed seven patents for parts of a GPS locator system that weighs 100 grams and transmits location information every 30 seconds to a Web-based program. That way, a person can track the location of the device in real time. A parameter can also be drawn around a locator map so that every time the user ventures beyond what the company calls “geo-fence,” a text message is sent to the subscriber’s cell phone.
Most GPS locaters are about the size of a shoebox and weigh a pound, Bertagna said. Global Trek’s GPS is cut down to a box small enough to embed in sneakers, which are manufactured in South Korea. The GPS represents about 80 percent of the total cost of the $200 shoes.
The company has already created an even smaller GPS locator that can be attached to belts and purses, and plans to roll them out in December.
Bertagna attributes the five-year development phase of the company to a series of blank looks from engineers who told him it couldn’t be done. Reducing the GPS locator to a 2-inch by 1-inch box that’s shock- and water-proof and runs on a battery for at least several days proved a long, difficult process.
Getting the product to the market has also been tricky. Global Trek’s target demographic for Smart Shoes is families with $60,000 annual household income or higher, whose lifestyles include cell phones, computers and Internet access. That’s not the typical customer at most major retail chains.
“We’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole,” Bertagna admitted.
Still, with distribution of the first pair of GPS-enabled sneakers just months away and revenue imminent, Bertagna is audacious. He compares himself to Bill Gates.
“Twenty-five years ago, when computers were the size of rooms and they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Bill Gates said there would be PCs on every kitchen counter,” Bertagna said. “Personal location service is going to be the next technological breakthrough, after PCs, cell phones and the Internet, that will change the way we do everything.”
