Yan Simard believes 2014 will be the year the market catches up with his company’s capabilities.

Simard is the founder and CEO of Zaptap, the Fredericton-based company that helps retailers market products in-store through consumers’ smartphones. The company has spent the past year refining its product and learning more about the marketing processes, and is now talking to major companies about larger, longer engagements than before.

It is working on a live deployment with a global brand in the automobile sector, which will begin  in the second quarter a paid one-year trial in Ontario.  ZapTap also has attracted a group of other brands  -- Simard declined to say how many – that are interested in the product. It hopes to covert them into paying customers this year.

“These are the ones that are going to implement with us in 2014,” said Simard in a Phone interview this week. “Over the last year, the interest was there but the urgency was not. Now, the market has caught up and we’re being asked, `How fast can you guys do it?’”.

Zaptap’s software allows consumers to “zap” a product label in a store with their smartphones, and immediately receive information on the product such as technical specifications, warranty information, etc. The system allows a retailer or maker of a consumer product – especially a luxury item -- to design and produce a label, control the information it delivers to consumers, and track the purchasing and reaction of customers who receive a specific message.

Simard said the company has more knowledge than ever before on how the system works. For example, it’s been working on the perfect trigger – the tag placed on an item in a store. After considering options such as QR codes (machine-readable black and white squares) or Near Field Communications (a contactless, Wi-Fi-lite technology), the company learned that the best performance is offered by low-energy BlueTooth.

It has also learned more about the optimum messaging for the smartphone experience, and now understands that images and videos are far more effective than text.

Zaptap, which now has eight employees, closed a round of angel funding in May 2012 that brought the total investment in the company to between $500,000 and $1 million. The company had previously raised $225,000 from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation and three private investors.

Simard is now in talks with potential investors and is working on another financing round, which he hopes will be worth about $4.5 million.