A CHESTER-BASED app team is looking to grow to one million users in the next year after a landmark partnership deal.

Designed in Chester, Impact Score, an app that helps consumers drive societal and environmental change by making better buying decisions, is acquiring the Giki Badges app – a trailblazing tool that lets shoppers find sustainable, ethical and healthy products simply by scanning a barcode.

Impact Score already contains details of over 120,000 UK businesses, while Giki Badges scores over 280,000 FMCG products across a range of environmental, social and nutritional measures.

Their combined database will provide consumers with a wealth of easy to digest product and company information.

It will also enable retailers and brands to connect more effectively with consumers and open a more informed dialogue with their customers about the sustainability, nutritional value and ethical impact of their businesses and products.

Together, the two platforms boast almost 100,000 loyal users and the Impact Score team plans to grow this to one million users within the next 12 months.

Integration of the two platforms into a single technology is intended to:

  • Give consumers access to a wealth of information, so they can tailor their purchasing choices in line with their needs and values;
  • Create a massive pool of data, scoring and ranking the sustainable and ethical credentials of products and companies;
  • Enable retailers and brands to better understand and connect with potential and existing customers, at every stage of the product journey – from development to marcomms – by enriching product and company sustainability data with consumer preferences, values and feedback;
  • Enable businesses to demonstrate genuine Environmental, Social and Governance credentials in the areas that investors and consumers care about most.

Launched by husband and wife team, Jo and James Hand, Giki Badges enables consumers to look-up over 280,000 supermarket products.

Impact Score is designed to make positive change happen by influencing consumer and retailer behaviour. The app tells consumers how over 120,000 businesses, including thousands of retailers and brands, treat their staff, suppliers and the environment.

It then provides users with a mechanism to feedback their opinions on these business practices at the click of a button.

Work is now under way, in partnership with the maths and applied science team at the University of Chester who developed the Impact Score rating system, to create a unified scoring system for the new combined technology.

Impact Score founder, Ian Yates said, "We are thrilled to be acquiring Giki Badges – a venture which precisely mirrors our own mission and values.

"Consumers are crying out for help in choosing more ethical, sustainable and nutritious products. This new, incredibly powerful source of intelligence we are creating, will help people make even better spending decisions by harnessing the power of data and technology.

"We already have 100,000 users who have all been generated via word-of-mouth. The next target is one million users and we are looking at crowdfunding to help us get there.

"The new platform will also help businesses, which need to be more dynamic, more transparent and more responsive to consumer needs.

"They can use the technology to guide their customers to the right product, at the right time, promote ethical purchasing and demonstrate they have the well-being of consumers and sustainability constantly in mind."

James Hand, co-founder of Giki Badges, added: "From the start of discussions with the Impact Score team we knew that this was a great fit. Bringing together our two applications will provide consumers with 360-degree insight into the ethical and sustainable credentials of products, manufacturers and retailers."

The new combined technology will launch later this year.