Young entrepreneur revolutionises cloakrooms
In Summary
Young entrepreneur and first year business student Dominic Goldsworthy is the brains behind Cloakr, Australia’s first and only digital cloakroom for nightclubs and event spaces.
The system allows venues to automate an old fashioned process, increasing efficiency and enabling business owners to capture details about their customers including demographics, how long they stay and how often they visit.
Mr Goldsworthy, who studies at Swinburne University of Technology, came up with the idea of converting an outdated cloakroom ticket system to a digital platform while at a local pub on his laptop.
“It all started on a Tuesday night at a pub near the uni. There were lots of people at the venue but I noticed there was no cloakroom, so I offered to run one for the pub using an excel spreadsheet I developed,” Mr Goldsworthy said.
“After four months of using the spreadsheet, I thought it would make a great app. I contacted a local developer, inoutput, to build the app and that was the beginning of Cloakr.
“The way it works is pretty simple. Patrons enter their contact details on an iPad, they key in how many items they want to cloak and a ticket is printed wirelessly.”
“We’re looking to integrate SMS and point of sale into the system very soon, which will make it even more streamlined.”
Now operating for just over a year, Cloakr has already signed up 20 venues, including some of Melbourne and Sydney’s top nightclubs.
“Six months ago I landed a contract with Telstra’s conference centre in Sydney, which was very exciting. I’ve already received positive feedback about how easy it is to use.”
Cloakr has just reached its first milestone with 100,000 items cloaked.
Mr Goldsworthy is launching another business, PWR, off the back of the success of this app, trialling a portable mobile recharging device, which is aimed at music festivals.
Swinburne has produced a number of up-and-coming entrepreneurs, including another business student, Nathan Darma, who developed an anonymous chat app for train users called Junction.
Swinburne alumnus, Shammika Munugoda, was the creator of Boomeringo, an app that tracks spending.
If you would like course advice or help with your application to study at Swinburne call 1300 275 794 or visit our website.