Contact Info
email: info@mycalidesigns
phone: +1 530.665.3174
Located
1059 Court Street, #112
Woodland, CA 95695
We’ve all heard the refrain before – shop local and support small businesses. Particularly as small businesses around America struggle with continued inflation, many of us are eager to do so. But sometimes it can be more difficult than you’d expect to help out the mom-and-pop shops or local hubs when you’re visiting from out of town or new to an area. I’m proud to have built a digital product that puts small business support – wherever you are in the world – at your fingertips.
While on a trip to Hawaii, our friends and family kept offering to buy drinks or dinner, but they could never find a way to get us a gift card to the local spots. This gave us an idea.
If our community wanted to support local and family-owned businesses from anywhere in the world, why shouldn’t they be able to?
When we returned from our travels, we shared the idea of a virtual gift card that could be used at a small business with some of our favorite restaurants here in Woodland. After explaining our story, the first restaurant we spoke to gave us a check for $20,000 to get our business off the ground. And that’s how we really got started.
Our product, DapIt, is all about community building. The first step is for a business is to join our app. Then, when a user accesses our product, they can purchase gift cards to the establishment regardless of the size of the business.
Being a tech startup, we first looked to digital tools and technology to help make our dream into something real. Figma’s UI/UX collaborative software allowed us to nail down the app’s functionality. And through the help of Stripe secure processing, we set up a virtual gift card that could be used for various formerly digitally inaccessible businesses. Stripe’s API helped us build a robust platform, while also offering the ability to think outside the box. And with some assistance from Google development and online collaboration platforms, we are continuing to grow our offerings to include more businesses, here in Woodland and beyond.
But a great product means little without the ability to get it out to users. The trusted landscape of stores within the mobile app ecosystem has allowed our product to get into the hands of thousands more customers than we otherwise would have been able to reach.
Where lots of other point of sale systems might have gift card features, our close-knit development team has been able to improve security, simplicity, and convenience, coming together in an application that easily builds community between those who are sending and receiving gift cards, and helps out small businesses in the process by purchasing a meal at a restaurant that is locally owned.
Being a small fish in a large pond of app developers, it’s been important to make friends along the way. Whether it be partnering with larger applications or gaining a more established understanding of the mobile application marketplace at our disposal. The partnerships we’ve created allow us to stick to our company’s mission. Especially in receiving the Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund, which gave us $100,000, we have been able to continually improve our offerings and better expand our product to do what we love – build community and support small businesses.
We are now operating with over 100 businesses and are excited for what the future holds as we continue to expand, across California and eventually the country. As we grow, I hope our leaders across America understand how important the current structure of mobile app marketplaces has been, by allowing us to deliver a tailored product to our desired customers. And building a more connected community in the process. But no matter how big we get, we will always return to our goal of finding awesome places in town and sharing them with others.
EVERY DESIGN TELLS A STORY.
LET US DESIGN YOUR STORY.
Helping Businesses Get Discovered Since 2012
All Rights Reserved | Torres LLC.
Located
1059 Court Street, Suite 112
Woodland, CA
Clients In
Woodland, CA
Winters, CA
Esparto, CA
Sacramento, CA
Roseville, CA
Davis, CA
Auburn, CA
Lakeport, CA
Woodland Hills, CA
Blue Earth, MN
Connecticut, USA
New York, NY
Industries We Serve
Restaurant
Retail
Science
Technology
Cannabis
HVAC Services
Contractor
Pest Control
Health Fitness
Farm
Education
Beauty/Salon
Real Estate
Non-Profits
Mentions