Our Story Starts with
Chicago Helicopter Experience
Taggable Co-Founder and CEO, Trevor Heffernan, started out in the tour and attraction industry over 9 years ago when he established Chicago’s first ever helicopter tour company, Chicago Helicopter Experience (CHE for short). CHE was a helicopter tour operator based in Chicago Illinois which would take guests on skyline tours over Chicago. Trevor built this company from the ground up starting out with a few passengers a week and growing it to a 40+ employee company operating four aircraft seven days a week, flying tens of thousands of passengers a year.
From day one, CHE had your basic photo printing operation. During a tour, CHE would take one iconic photo of the guest in front of their helicopter, print the photo while they were out on the tour, put it in a cardboard frame, and hope that the guest would like it enough to purchase it at the end of the tour.
What We Learned
After years of printing expenses, mechanical headaches, employee errors, hidden costs, photo waste, and unsatisfied customers, Trevor knew there had to be a better way to manage photos. He set out to perfect the clunky photo process that had become so common in the industry. Here's what he learned:
Guests want authentic photos of their entire experience, not just one staged photo in front of the helicopter.
Guests want to see all of their photos and choose their favorites, not just settle for the one that's already been printed.
Guests want photos to be sent to their phones so they have them right away--to share, post, and tag.
Taggable was Born
So Trevor teamed up with some tech experts and developed a system which let CHE take a whole bunch of photos of their guests, allowed each guest to preview them all on their own device, purchase what they wanted, and have them delivered in a digital format instantly to their phone… Taggable was born.
Trevor utilized and perfected the system at CHE. By allowing his guests to preview all of their photos, offering multiple photos for sale at one low price, and delivering the photos digitally and instantly to each guest’s phone, Taggable increased CHE’s photo sell through rate by 59.77%.
Not only did sales increase, but CHE eliminated all photo printers, photo paper, photo ink, photo frames, and the staff who ran the photo counter. This completely eliminated CHE’s photo production costs, a 100% reduction.
Taggable did take a small percentage of each photo sale as a fee, but even with that fee factored in, CHE’s switch to Taggable still resulted in a 77% increase to photo sales profit!
After experiencing the benefits of Taggable first hand and seeing the impact it had on CHE’s bottom line, Trevor knew his friends and partners in the tourism industry could also benefit from Taggable. Today Trevor, along with his partners at Taggable, focus all of their time and effort on bringing the digital age to every tour operator, attraction, and venue in the world.
Meet the Founders
Trevor Heffernan
CEO & Co-Founder
Trevor is an entrepreneur with more than a decade of experience in the travel, tourism, and event industry. Trevor built and ran one of the largest tour operations, event venues, and attractions in Chicago called Chicago Helicopter Experience. His unique background is the foundation from which Trevor developed several technologies and processes to help improve efficiency, reduce expenses, and ultimately increase profits. Trevor built CHE into a 50+ person company which flew over 100k guests in the most efficient helicopter operation in the world. Creating and leading a large team that must execute at the highest level at all times due to guests' lives being at stake has given him a unique perspective and unmatched operational experience. This unique expertise enables Trevor to create solutions that are practical, cost effective, and executable for companies of all sizes.
Matthew Maday
CSO & Co-Founder
Matthew is an entrepreneur, inventor, educator and athlete. For over 20 years, Matthew was CEO of Oncall Interactive, a Chicago-based digital agency that provided strategy and digital development for companies like McDonald’s, Nike, Microsoft and AT&T. Matthew has more than two decades of expertise in building secure, yet simple digital platforms. Matthew is the creator of Capture Point, a guest engagement software and kiosk system used by attractions across the country including The Museum of Science and Industry, The Adler Planetarium, The Smithsonian, and Rippley’s Believe it or Not. Matthew has been credited with inventing several other guest engagement platforms including PromoVantage, a patent-pending sweepstakes deployment and analytics platform, used by the NFL, Restaurant.com and Discovery Channel as well ad BRANDflex, a first-of-its-kind brand management platform, enabling brands such as Harley Davidson and Hewlett Packard to maintain brand consistency worldwide. Mattew’s vast experience helps drive the strategy and decision making behind Taggable’s technology and growth.
Anthony Cassara
COO & Co-Founder
Since 2000, through the power of automation and web technologies, Anthony has helped businesses of all types and sizes reach their true potential with his Chicago based digital agency, True Productions. With a unique service-based approach, Anthony gives businesses the confidence they need to operate in today’s marketplace, arming them with the expertise and knowledge needed to grow and adapt to a constantly changing environment. Anthony and his team bring this approach to Taggable to re-define what it means to deliver service, support, and automation.
Kamen Kamenov
CTO & Co-Founder
With over 20 years of experience in big data, data mining, software system architecture, and software automation, Kamen has spearheaded tech development for a variety of entrepreneurial initiatives. Kamen has extensive experience developing innovative technology which dominates many different market segments. These initiatives range from big data arbitrage mining to "smart" team performance boosting applications with a human touch. Kamen turns ideas and concepts into reality through his incredible talent to architect new and innovative technological solutions. Taggable’s industry changing features like facial recognition filters and instant photo delivery are examples of Kamen’s innovative and creative ability to bring ideas and concepts to life.