Rural shoppers pay more, travel further, and earn nothing back. Rewardly is what happens when you stop treating loyalty as a points card and start treating it as a local currency.
Brand hero — the phone mockup showing the in-app loyalty card against the red brand background, with the Rewardly logo lockup. From the investor deck title slide.
3/2
41.3 km
Motuoapa to the nearest Pak'n Save
Google Maps, 2025
~90%
of a $25B grocery market held by two players
Commerce Commission NZ, 2022
38%
of shoppers rate loyalty schemes barely useful or worse
Consumer NZ, 2025
From Motuoapa, the nearest Pak'n Save is a 41.3 km drive to Taupō. That trip costs time and fuel, so most people shop at the local dairy instead — where a smaller range and thinner supply chains push prices up. Either way the household pays more.
The loyalty schemes that soften this for city shoppers do not reach here. New World Clubcard and Woolworths' card are tied to their own stores, and those stores are not in these towns. Local grocers who might close that gap cannot afford the POS systems those programmes assume.
The distance made visible — a map marking Motuoapa and the 41.3 km route to the nearest Pak'n Save in Taupo. Needs making: screenshot the route, then restyle in the Rewardly palette.
4/3
Every version I sketched at first was a points app for one shop. Each one failed the same way: a single rural dairy does not have enough transaction volume to fund rewards worth collecting.
The unlock came from the Bristol Pound — a UK community currency designed to keep spending circulating inside a region rather than leaking out to national chains. Applied to loyalty, the maths changes. Retailers contribute 0.5–1.5% of eligible daily sales into a shared pool. Points earned at the bakery spend at the dairy. No single store carries the cost, and the network is the product.
One shop's loyalty scheme is a discount. Fifteen shops sharing one is an economy.
The circular pool model — retailers each contribute 0.5 to 1.5 percent of daily sales into one shared pool; a shopper earns at the dairy and redeems at the bakery; value stays inside the region. Needs making. No existing asset covers this and it is the argument the whole page rests on.
16/9
The binding constraint was never design, it was assumption. Anything requiring a new app, a smartphone, or a POS upgrade excludes the shoppers and retailers this is for.
So enrolment is a phone number or a QR scan at the counter. Balances arrive by SMS for anyone without the app. Retailers get a browser dashboard, not hardware. Scan. Save. Smile. — three words, because the instructions have to fit on a counter card.
Three app screens side by side — QR scan at checkout, reward balance, SMS confirmation. From the customer pitch 'Our Simple Solution' slide.
4/3
The physical counter card — the red Rewardly card with the Scan. Save. Smile. lockup. This is the low-tech path for shoppers without the app, so it carries the accessibility argument.
3/2
I built separate pitches for capital and for the counter. Switch between them.
The pitch to capital leads with structure: a market where two players hold most of the value, a segment they do not serve, and a model that gets more defensible with every store that joins.
Funding allocation donut — NZD $150,000 split across platform enhancement, pilot expansion, marketing and outreach, and team. Relabel from the lakh notation before exporting.
1/1
$150,000
Seed ask across platform, pilot, marketing and team
100+Projected
Stores targeted in first six months
15,000Projected
Active users targeted in first six months
Deliberately small at the start — a region, not a country.
Days 1–30
Days 31–60
Days 61–90
Days 91–100
Six tools, each answering a question I could not answer by intuition.
Why this framework
To pressure-test whether the problem was real before designing anything.
What it revealed
The unfair advantage was not the technology. It was being purpose-built for a sector both incumbents ignore.
The completed lean canvas from Assignment One, red brand version.
4/3
Why this framework
To separate what shoppers say they want from what actually blocks them.
What it revealed
The blocker was not price sensitivity, it was distrust of vague reward terms. Simplicity became a feature, not a compromise.
The value proposition canvas showing customer jobs, pains and gains against the product's pain relievers and gain creators.
4/3
Why this framework
To find whitespace against Clubcard and Onecard on convenience versus value.
What it revealed
Both incumbents optimise value for urban volume. Nobody was competing on convenience for low-connectivity users.
The convenience versus value quadrant with Rewardly, Clubcard and Woolworths plotted. Redraw in the site palette rather than screenshotting the Canva original.
4/3
Why this framework
To design for two buyers with opposite incentives — the shopper and the shopkeeper.
What it revealed
Mary avoids apps that need logins. Ravi cannot spend on a POS. Both constraints pointed at the same answer: SMS and QR.
Mary Thompson and Ravi Sharma side by side as two clean persona cards. Rebuild from the assignment tables — do not screenshot the Word tables.
4/3
Why this framework
To find where a rural shopper would actually drop out.
What it revealed
Awareness was not the weak point. First redemption was — so reward balance had to be visible on the receipt.
The shopper journey from awareness to advocacy as a horizontal band with the emotional arc marked. Rebuild from the assignment table.
4/3
Why this framework
To test the concept against paper stamp cards, not just the supermarkets.
What it revealed
Paper cards beat the big schemes on rural reach. That is the real incumbent, and the bar to clear.
The Rewardly versus Clubcard, Onecard and paper stamp card comparison grid from the customer pitch.
4/3
The strategy, positioning and brand work came easily — that is the part I have done professionally. The financial modelling did not. I could describe the revenue streams clearly but struggled to build defensible projections underneath them, and the six-month forecast in the deck is directional rather than modelled. I have flagged it as projected wherever it appears for that reason.
The second thing I would change is sequencing. I designed the reward mechanics before validating the pool contribution rate with an actual retailer. 0.5–1.5% is a reasonable-looking number that no shopkeeper has yet agreed to. In a real launch that conversation happens first.
Sources
Commerce Commission NZ, Market Study into the Retail Grocery Sector, 2022, Marshall & O'Neill, The Bristol Pound: A Tool for Localisation?, Ecological Economics, 2018, Consumer NZ, Survey on supermarket specials, 2025, Visa NZ, Loyalty insights, 2022
© 2026 Vikas Viradiya — Built with intention.