Monaker Group Provides Corporate Update
2 hours 56 minutes ago - DJNF
Monaker Group Provides Corporate Update
WESTON, FL--(Marketwired - Aug 18, 2015) - Monaker Group, Inc. (OTCQB: MKGI), (the "Company") or ("Monaker"), a digital marketing company focused on the Travel, Home and Employment sectors, released today an update from Mr. William Kerby, the Company's Chairman & CEO.
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
I am happy to report we have made significant progress improving the foundation of the Company and launching initiatives on several fronts that should achieve meaningful growth and viability for our Company benefitting Monaker Group Stakeholders. In the past 100 days, the Company came to terms with key debtholders whereby it was able to modify and/or eliminate debt and restrictive covenants hampering our plans. These changes allowed us to immediately commence building out our core assets and foster key new partnerships.
Monaker at its core is a video centric marketing company that has positioned itself at the forefront of the exploding video market. Large corporations are racing to catch up with consumer's insatiable desire to obtain information and entertainment through video platforms that additionally provide the ability to transact. Monaker has focused its efforts on arguably the three highest consumer passion areas "Travel, Home and Work," knowing that a customer in one vertical is highly likely to be a potential customer in the other two verticals enabling us to cross market the platforms. In order to accelerate our platforms, the Company has established key supplier relationships in the home, travel and employment verticals based on our ability to better market their products utilizing video to targeted consumers across large distribution channels. In short we strive to provide the right product to the right customer at the right time!
We have recently reported by press release a number of milestones including completing our corporate name change to Monaker Group Inc., and we are in the final stages of updating our new corporate websites (www.MonakerGroup.com, www.HomeAndAwayClub.com, www.Maupintour.com, www.NextTrip.com) as well as previously announced partner portal websites (e.g. www.NameYourFee.com, www.uBid.com, www.RRTV.com and are in the process of adding key Tourism Boards as joint marketing partners) to reflect current initiatives and activities.
On July 24, 2015 we were approved and began trading under our new trading symbol MKGI on the OTC Markets OTCQB platform. The OTCQB venture market is home to approximately 1,000 U.S. and international companies that have uniformly met the new standards and eligibility requirements that were implemented over the last year. More than 2,000 companies were removed from OTCQB for failing to meet the OTCQB standards. The new OTCQB standards were introduced to efficiently provide a public venture market for dynamic companies to mature and expand their businesses.
We are current with our SEC and Regulatory filings and our primary goal is to scale the Monaker Group businesses across the Travel, Employment and Home Consumer Sectors. To that end we have issued news on several fronts as follows:
Travel
-- Maupintour, a wholly owned subsidiary of Monaker, has a 66 year operating
history and is widely recognized in the Travel Industry as an innovator
for developing specialty luxury tours for the discerning traveler. At its
height in the 1990s, under Tom Maupin, Maupintour booked over $60 million
in travel annually. The company is working internally and with partners
to quickly re-establish Maupintour as the premier Vacation and Tour
Company with its great pedigree. Our recently launched Video Tour Guides
("VTG") combined with Maupintour's history, reputation, growing
partnerships and platforms are a great step forward. VTG's help consumers
meet these vacation needs by delivering video in support of great travel
packages allowing customers to select the right travel offering. Within
the first 60 days of introduction, we have seen adoption of the
Maupintour VTG's by travel agents, tourism boards, wholesalers and are
actively working with large distribution partners like Atout France (the
French Tourism Board) to integrate our offerings into their websites,
newsletters and outreach to their 260,000 U.S based followers. These new
experiential trips, additional offerings in the pipeline, and the launch
of our Video Tour Guides and highly targeted messaging with new
partnerships, should drive Maupintour back to the forefront of
extraordinary vacation travel while at the same time providing a clear
path to revenue growth for our stakeholders.
-- NextTrip.com is a video based website that is being integrated into the
extensive product and services platforms with Mark Travel -- the largest
travel wholesaler in North America. In gaining access to Mark's vast
travel product purchasing power, NextTrip.com will be able to compete
pricewise with the other major online travel players, however travel is
not entirely won on price. NextTrip.com plans to accelerate travel
offerings utilizing video and strategic partnerships with large
distribution capabilities. To this end, the Company recently announced a
partnership with uBid.com to become their travel supplier. uBid is in the
process of integrating our travel offerings into their websites and will
actively market VTG's to their 6,000,000 active users.
-- Monaker will utilize its relationship with R&R Television's network to
air 30 second commercials and selective Travel programing for its
partners. R&R TV broadcasts into approximately 37 million households in
the Caribbean, Canada and the United States. Additionally, a distribution
agreement has been reached with Simply Me that will position R&R
Television to be carried on a VOD platform on Dish Network, Verizon FIOS
and the 126 million mobile devices on Verizon Wireless. Monaker holds a
ten percent interest in R&R TV.
Home
-- Monaker has partnered with I.C.E. Gallery ("ICE") to create the Home&
Away Club. Monaker Group expects to derive benefit from membership
platform, where goods are sold for customer benefit at close-to-cost
pricing, with operational profit derived from membership fees similar to
the "Costco Model". The club has been designed for both homeowners and
private label affinity groups. The benefits are far reaching, giving
members' access to travel products (i.e. cruise, hotel, resort, air and
car rental) lifestyle offerings (golf, skiing, wine clubs, high end
merchandise, sports, concert and entertainment tickets, cosmetics, spa,
and wellness programs) and recently added home products and services
(roughly one million home products and services are being integrated).
ICE's vast network has over 55 million subscribers worldwide and will
form a core platform from which Monaker will be able to accelerate
homeowner memberships utilizing its reach into the real estate service
industry via key relationships including through its ownership interest
in RealBiz Media Group.
-- Monaker has created a loyalty and incentive based program for real estate
agents under the RealBiz platform and is additionally searching out
opportunities to private label the platform to home service providers
utilizing video marketing to generate loyalty and awareness of Home &
Away Club product offerings. We are encouraged by the initial interest
being generated.
Employment
-- Monaker acquired 51% of NameYourFee.com website technology and staff as
part of an ongoing partnership with the Jasper Group. NameYourFee.com is
a next generation job recruiting solution that allows employers to
specify the amount of commission they are willing to pay a recruiting
firm for placing candidates. Recruiters can review the opportunity and
accept or reject based upon their current order flow. Traditionally,
recruiting firms charge up to 30% of the candidate's first year salary,
but under this scenario the market can find and negotiate a more
cost-effective fee. NameYourFee.com starts with a significant advantage
through its ability to access over 6000 recruiters and significant
databases in North America through Jasper Group's related companies. The
immediate goal is to continue to grow these partnerships along with
integrating the first video job postings, followed by an app which will
allow both job candidate and companies to create, review and share video.
The first video job posting platform will be launched in this month.
Corporate Branding
As many of you may know, earlier this year Monaker Group (formerly Next 1 Interactive) and RealBiz Media (OTCQB: RBIZ) went through a deconsolidation and on August 6, 2015, I announced my resignation from the RealBiz Company. It was a very complex and consuming process deconsolidating the two companies but it is now complete and widely believed to be in the best interest of both companies. Monaker Group has maintained a 31 percent ownership interest in RBIZ. I remain a director of RBIZ and believe I left them in their best financial shape and outlook, and I am very happy to return to my true roots in the Travel and Consumer Sectors at the helm of Monaker Group at a very exciting time. I will be focusing all my time and attention for the advancement and success of Monaker. Years of time and effort has been expended to galvanize some past partnership and relationships in the Travel and Home Consumer space for the benefit of Monaker and I look forward to capitalizing on them.
Strengthening the Team
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