Celilo Group Media, Inc.
A Trusted Digital Multichannel Marketing Platform
Descriptive Memorandum
March 2020
Prepared by
T.V. METZ & CO., LLC Boutique Investment Banking
For further information contact: Tom Metz [email protected] (206) 779-7707
The information contained in the attached memorandum has been obtained from the management of Celilo Group
Media, Inc. This information is believed to be accurate; however, T.V. Metz & Co., LLC disclaims any and all liability
for representations or warranties, express or implied.
T.V. METZ & CO., LLC CELILO DESCRIPTIVE MEMORANDUM 2
Table of Contents
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... 2
Key Strengths ...................................................................................................................... 3
Key Opportunities ............................................................................................................... 4
The Company ...................................................................................................................... 5
The Platform – Chinook Book ............................................................................................. 6
Customers........................................................................................................................... 9
Sales and Marketing ......................................................................................................... 10
Technology Platform ........................................................................................................ 11
Financial Summary ........................................................................................................... 12
Employees and Management ........................................................................................... 13
Appendix A: Technology Platform Detail ......................................................................... 15
Appendix B: B Corporation Status .................................................................................... 16
T.V. METZ & CO., LLC CELILO DESCRIPTIVE MEMORANDUM 3
Key Strengths
Robust Platform
The Chinook Book marketing platform is effective because it delivers valuable data to
merchants and is engaging for consumers. It is scalable.
Verifiable ROI
Chinook Book can objectively verify that its promotion has generated a positive return
on investment for the merchant. Chinook Book demonstrates verifiable ROI for
merchants through data collection at all levels of the sales and transaction funnel.
High Retention
Celilo’s system has proven to be successful in acquiring as well as retaining clients with
over 70% retention.
National and Local Reach
Celilo provides solutions to national eCommerce down to hyper-local advertising.
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Key Opportunities
National Companies Can Connect Locally
National companies can create connections within a local community using rewards.
American Express is a good example. Chinook Book deals prompt people to go to stores
and use their Amex card to drive usage and reward loyalty. Transportation, media
companies and large nonprofits that want a local presence could also take advantage of
Chinook Book.
Platform Can be Applied to Any Vertical
An acquirer can integrate the Chinook Book platform into its existing business.
Organizations that have audiences can utilize this platform to acquire and retain
customers by providing rewards and loyalty.
Companies with Large Audiences Can Generate Additional Revenue
The Chinook Book platform can help companies with large audiences to generate new
sources of revenue from merchants that want to reach their existing audience.
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The Company Celilo Group Media is a media and technology company that connects businesses to
customers. Its flagship, Chinook Book, is a multi-channel marketing platform that
integrates a mobile app with email, web, content, contesting and social promotions
that enable marketers and merchants to engage with customers.
Chinook Book delivers mobile coupons, promotes contests, product launches,
events, rewards and loyalty. Customers save on groceries, restaurants, cafés,
entertainment, home & garden, fashion, wellness and travel. Chinook Book is a
high-quality brand.
Celilo’s platform can be applied to an existing SMB’s user base; it can also provide
new users to the SMB. The platform was developed specifically for SMBs. In
addition, it provides an audience of existing and new consumers for these SMBs.
Revenues are $2 million. Almost all of Celilo’s revenue is from B2B, about 90%.
Advertising and incentive reward solutions for SMBs account for 80% of revenues
and 20% are from end-user subscriptions.
Celilo currently operates in five local markets: Denver, Minneapolis, Portland,
Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area. Additionally, the Company has a growing
group of national eCommerce advertisers. The Company has more than 3,000
advertising locations, including stores and large events.
Celilo also works with organizations that have large audiences. These include energy
companies, universities and public media organizations. Celilo’s system gives them
tools to help gain and retain their customers.
The Company recently downsized (because of the coronavirus) from 20 to 14
employees. This includes a development center with five employees in Bucharest,
Romania. This strong and cost-effective in-house development team allows Celilo to
go to market quickly and adjust nimbly to changing market conditions.
Celilo Group Media was founded in 1999 and began by publishing print books of
coupon offers for sustainable advertisers that were sold in grocery stores and as a
fundraiser by schools. Celilo produced other custom publications during the early
days. During the late 2000s, Celilo published an online directory. That project
evolved into the Chinook Book mobile app, which launched in 2010 shortly after the
iOS app store was launched. The Celilo platform is designed for both Android native
and iOS native systems.
Celilo has embraced virtual work environments, leveraging solutions like Slack,
Google Docs, and other specialized tools since 2014. Celilo has small workspaces in
Portland, Minneapolis, and Bucharest Romania. The workforce is highly mobile and
virtual.
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The Platform — Chinook Book The Chinook Book platform helps businesses tell their story, promote brand
awareness, drive in-store sales and encourage loyalty. It delivers mobile coupons
and promotes contests, product launches and events.
Chinook Book offers a hyper-local to national digital marketing tool for businesses. It
includes coupons to save money in a mobile app along with resources and news
stories that introduce customers to sustainable organizations in their area.
To see how Celilo tells the story of its platform solution see
https://www.chinookbiz.com.
The platform has uniquely valuable capabilities, including:
• Marketers can tell their story their way to their customers.
• Geo-located push reminders to use Favorited offers when the user is in the
neighborhood
• New weekly discounts to encourage loyalty and increase engagement
• Seasonal promotions for merchants that want to drive business at certain
times
• Punchcards that earn free pizza, coffee, bread and more
Figure 1 A Complete Marketing Funnel Solution
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• Easy searches by name, category, new, expiring or popular to help
consumers find deals near them
• Users can save offers to a list with one tap
• Contests and prizes from Chinook Book business partners
Most advertising platforms either excel in "top of funnel" branding and storytelling
or "bottom of funnel" incentive and conversion. This platform does both with a
natural progression from discovery to education to redemption.
The Chinook Book app has better reviews than most discount offer apps, averaging
nearly five stars in the last 12 months. The platform is reliable, and most
importantly, the user experience is solid. Engagement with new Chinook Book
products, such as the News Feed on the home screen of version 5.0, is exceeding
expectations and industry metrics.
The platform can integrate seamlessly into existing customer loyalty models. As
currently deployed, the platform is focused on sustainability. The platform has the
functionality and scalability to serve any consumer-facing organization.
Figure 2 The Chinook Book App
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The Chinook Book Community
Chinook Book has engendered a trusted community between merchants and
consumers, who share values of sustainability and support of local businesses. It
attracts premium merchants. This is a key reason that the Company has a high
retention rate.
Chinook Book connects businesses that meet basic sustainability business practices
and consumers that share like values. The significance of this focus is that Chinook
Book attracts merchants that do not advertise or provide discounts any other place.
In addition, the customers are high value. This creates a trusted community for both
merchants and users. While once a niche market, basic sustainability practices
including organic food and recycling are now mainstream.
Audience & Community Enhancement Programs To grow its audience and revenue and to entrench itself as a valued community
member Chinook Book has established two partnership programs.
Community Rewards The Chinook Book Community Rewards platform gives large membership
organizations a way to deliver rewards and discounts to their donors and
subscribers. The Chinook Book app makes it inexpensive and efficient for them to
participate. Donors and subscribers of these organizations can take advantage of
the Chinook Book app without needing to arrange agreements with merchants.
The Chinook Book Community Rewards solution is continuing to grow. Examples of
reward clients include:
• Minnesota Public Radio: the largest public radio network in the country
with more than 80,000 sustaining donors
• Oregon Museum of Science and Industry: more than 25,000 members
• Nike: more than 50,000 employees
• Portland General Electric: thousands of customers
• Boulder Valley School District: a reward for their 5,000+ employees
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Customers Celilo sells to three sets of customers:
1. Direct to consumers
2. To marketers that want to reach consumers
3. To organizations with audiences (consumers)
Consumers Chinook Book has a total audience of 250,000. Of these, 58,000 have paid full-access
subscriptions and more than 20,000 of these have paid for a 12-month subscription
in-app with a credit card.
Marketers and Advertisers
Marketers include dining, retail, service sector, civic institutions, government
agencies, nonprofit organizations, attractions, destination marketing organizations
and wellness services. The Company has more than 1,400 advertising customers
with 3,000 locations. Advertisers have a local presence in Celilo’s markets and a
strong sustainability commitment.
Organizations with Audiences
These organizations use Chinook Book to acquire and retain audience. Target
audience partners include publications, membership organizations, destination
marketing organizations and nonprofits seeking to reward and incentivize
membership through discounts and rewards.
Energy companies, universities and large nonprofits have partnered with Chinook
Book to give their audiences incentives.
Brand Integrity
Chinook Book has an excellent reputation in its markets. The brand is trusted and
respected and is perceived to be a brand with high integrity. Chinook Book also
enjoys high user retention and engagement compared to other deals platforms due
to its strong brand alignment with schools, nonprofits and shared community
values.
Sales and Marketing
The sales team is currently managing more than 1,000 accounts that renew
annually. Many of these customers purchase additional advertising products
throughout the year. The team is also managing a new acquisition pipeline of more
than 2,000 prospects.
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Pricing
Advertising products are sold as packages at various pricing levels up to $20,000.
End-user mobile app subscriptions are $16 per year.
Competitive Landscape
Celilo’s direct competitors fall into four broad segments:
• Programmatic and Display Ad & Content Platforms — Facebook, Google,
Instagram, Yelp
• Legacy Media — traditional print, radio, television and outdoor display
advertising organizations
• Deals Platforms — Groupon, Ibotta, ValPak
• Loyalty/Rewards Platforms — 5 Star, Square, Revel
The key point of differentiation from programmatic and content platforms (like
Google or Facebook) is that Chinook Book offers a narrowly targeted demographic
of pre-qualified prospects with “skin in the game” due to their subscription
purchase behavior and self-selection as values-oriented consumers. In addition,
Chinook Book offers extremely robust and verifiable attribution. Unlike most digital
displays, Chinook Book can verify that the promotion resulted in either an in-store
purchase or an online purchase.
Celilo’s key point of differentiation from legacy media is its mobile-optimized
promotion mechanism and its ability to prove sales attribution through geo-located
redemptions of the mobile offers.
The key differentiator from deals platforms is the flexibility and freedom that
Chinook Book provides the merchant to create an offer that will work for their
timing, promotional goals and business model. The mechanisms that Celilo offers
(such as contest activation, branded content, enhanced profile and punchcard)
allow the merchant to tell its unique story and incentivize loyalty/repeat business in
addition to first-time sales.
Celilo’s business customers prefer to attract customers that share their values. They
like receiving detailed actionable data about their promotion’s views, clicks and
redemptions so that they are convinced that it works. They also like that the
promotions include built-in mobile push reminders based on location and seasonal
relevance.
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Technology Celilo has a technology platform that is designed for both Android native and iOS
native systems. The Company has a substantial server and app platform with a
number of new capabilities under development. Celilo has developed a platform
leveraging Amazon Web Services that is highly scalable on a global scale.
Details of the technology platform are outlined in Appendix A.
New Capabilities Under Development
Celilo’s current development roadmap remains relevant to supporting the
Company’s merchants during and after the Corona pandemic. These new projects
will strengthen the Company’s product offerings and increase business efficiency.
This will improve Celilo’s ability to be profitable when the Company emerges from
the slowdown.
• Production enhancements allowing the Company to produce more with
fewer staff.
• A brand update and app re-skin with new “user collection” functionality will
enhance partner’s exposure while allowing users to better position the
brand favorably for pitching to new strategic partners.
• The contest platform is being brought in house, increasing its utility for user
acquisition and driving improved in-app metrics for merchants.
• A new semi-automated merchant onboarding process will create
efficiencies in sales and production by allowing self-service onboarding and
renewal for small revenue merchants.
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Financial Summary
The Company’s summary financial statements are presented below. Celilo Group
Media has been capitalized by a number of angel investors and approximately
$3 million has been invested to date. The Company is cash flow positive.
(000s) 2016 2017 2018 2019
Total Revenue: $3,296 $3,171 $2,596 $2,654
Operating Expenses 3,325 3,314 3,196 2,369
Operating Income (29) (143) (600) 285
Almost all of Celilo’s revenue is from B2B, about 80%. Advertising and incentive
reward solutions for businesses and organizations account for 80% of revenues and
20% is from end-user subscriptions.
Management Discussion — Recent Events
2019 was a pivotal year for Celilo. The Company demonstrated significant
operational competence in effecting these changes. Management reorganized the
Company to execute a completely digital strategy on a more national scale.
Celilo successfully converted merchants to a fully digital platform. The Company
wound down its legacy print coupon book in September to focus on its digital
audience singularly. Celilo has fully shifted its strategy and its product mix to digital
products. The response from local business, local eCommerce and national
eCommerce has been strong.
In addition, Celilo has done an excellent job of nimbly moving through a vastly
changing retail environment. The Company increased its user base significantly.
Celilo finished the year with a positive operating profit.
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Employees & Management
Celilo has an excellent team all around. The Company employs 14 people:
Management 1
Sales & Marketing 5
Software Development 6
Customer Support 1
Administrative 1
Total 14
The Company has a development center with five employees (included above) in
Bucharest, Romania that was founded in 2014.
Management Team
Management and key employees are enthusiastic about taking the Chinook Book
business model to the next level as part of a larger organization.
Greg Keene, CEO
Greg has an extensive background in mobile technology, platform, and product
strategy. He has worked with Celilo Group Media as CEO for two years and as the
Chief Technology Officer for four years. Prior to that, Greg worked as an Internet
Strategy and Technology Consultant with Watertown, LLC.; was co-founder and CTO
of Qsent, a venture capital-backed mobile application and data firm that was
acquired by TransUnion; and was co-founder and CTO of Pacific Harbor Publishing,
an early 1990s web-development and hosting company. Greg has a Bachelor of
Science degree from Oregon State University and a postgraduate certificate from
Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Trisha Pancio, Director of Marketing
Trisha has more than 15 years of experience in marketing and business
development. Prior to Celilo, she was Director of Marketing and Business
Development for Arciform and Versatile Wood Products and Director of Marketing
for Oregon Ballet Theatre and Artists Repertory Theatre. Trisha has a Bachelor’s
Degree from Reed College.
Katherine Mullen, Senior Vice President of Sales
Katherine has more than 20 years of sales experience. She has been with Celilo for
18 years. Prior to Celilo, she was an environmental consultant and writer, and a
Program Director for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and a Project Coordinator
for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Katherine has a Bachelor of Science
degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Minnesota.
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Eugen Popescu, Director of Development
Eugen has been involved with engineering management and architecture for over
15 years. Prior to Celilo, Eugen was the Software Architect Team Lead for Twispay, a
Software Architect at Crossrider Plc, Irresistible Me, Bitterstrawberry and AMOMA,
and a freelance web developer. Eugen has a degree in Computer Science from the
Politehnica University of Bucharest.
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Appendix A: Technology Platform Detail The Chinook Book platform is designed for both Android native and iOS native
systems. Chinook Book has a substantial server and app platform including:
• API server platform to support mobile apps.
• Affiliate platform to support revenue sharing for user acquisition
• Administration platform to support:
o Campaign production
o User management and support
o Affiliate network support
o Community Rewards administration
o Reporting
• Data warehouse with more than 400 million records
• Celilo develops using the following technology:
o Mobile
▪ Native iOS Development
▪ Native Android Development
o Server Development & Technologies
▪ Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• PHP Elastic Beanstalk Web & Workers
• Aurora (MySQL) Autoscale RDS
• SQS
• Cognito Mobile Sync
• CloudSearch
• CloudFront
• S3
▪ PHP (Laravel, Vue.js, Ember.js)
▪ Algolia (Search)
▪ Periscope (Redshift) Data Warehouse
▪ Github
▪ Postman
▪ Sentry Monitoring
▪ Zendesk
▪ Mailchimp/Mandrill
o Sales
▪ Salesforce
▪ Custom Salesforce sync integration to other in-house and
3rd-party platforms
o Financial and Accounting
▪ Stripe (standard and Connect) Billing integration
▪ Recurly Billing Integration
▪ Xero Accounting Integration
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Appendix B: Certified B Corporation In 2010, the Company was certified as a B Corporation and was
recertified in 2013. Certified B Corporations are businesses that balance
purpose and profit. They are legally required to consider the impact of
their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community and
the environment.
To qualify for B Corp status, Celilo underwent rigorous application and qualification
criteria designed to establish sustainable and ethical business practices. B Corp
certification increases trust with prospective advertisers by offering independent
third-party confirmation of the organization’s ability to follow through on its brand
promise. As the publication and mobile marketing arenas become saturated with
more fly-by-night unstable start-ups and failing legacy businesses, acquiring and
maintaining the trust of local merchant partners becomes increasingly difficult.
B Corp certification offers an important shorthand for Celilo’s track record and
operating principles. This resonates with Celilo’s merchants.
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