Rob Wilcox wants you to pull out your cell phone, shoot photos of people you do not know, and text or email them to his startup company, Face File, just in case they turn out to be psycho killers.
Should anything happen to you, their likenesses have been captured with a date and time stamp for law enforcement authorities to pursue.
"We don't want people to be crime paparazzi," Wilcox said. "But if you get into a car accident, take a picture of the license plate of the car that hit you."
Wilcox is a consummate marketer who spent a decade developing American Crew hair care products, acquired by Revlon in 1996. After leaving American Crew in 2005, he now runs a marketing firm specializing in launching consumer brands. And he hopes to make his Lakewood, Colo., company a household name in personal security.
Funded by little more than friends and family and sweat, Face File is one of those ideas that could catch on amid a global economic collapse and the rising crime rate it spawns.
Ever wonder what those cameras on cell phones are for?
If you sign up for a free account at www.face-file.com, you can take a photo of anyone you meet, store the photo online, and alert friends and family, who can access the photo and call the police if anything goes horribly wrong.
Telling strangers that you are taking a photo for your personal protection network is a deterrent by itself, said Wilcox, who launched Face File in June with retail consultant Sandy Cohen, a former executive of Lucky Brand Dungarees.
Send your daughter to college and suddenly she may wind up in a bar with a guy she's known five minutes.
Teach her to shoot first and ask questions later.
"He may have been thinking about slipping a roofie to her. Now he's been documented. He's going to think twice," Wilcox said.
Not to be confused with social networking site Facebook, Face File is a bit like snapping a mug shot down at the county clink. And if you disappear, your Face File pictures can be fed into a national crime data base, and your assailant may be apprehended.
Wilcox hopes this highly intrusive process becomes as routine as a handshake and takes on a name, like "Getting Faced." He knows that if it succeeds, his users will be the ones to decide what to call it.
"Kids take pictures all the time. It's a natural thing for them to do...The verb will come from the youth market."
Coming of age in the 70s, as I did, I like the phrase, "Book 'em Danno."
"In the beginning it's going to clumsy," Wilcox concedes, "but a woman going on a blind date has no problem saying, 'I'm going to take your picture and I'm filing it away.'"
So how does this thing make money? Face File seeks to sell premium subscriptions with more features for $3.99 a month. It also hopes to sell advertising and license some of the software it's developing, Wilcox said.
Frank DeAngelis is no stranger to threats as the principal of Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colo., home to one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.
He likes Face File so much, he wants to introduce it to area parents and students.
"I've never seen anything like this -- that would alert four or five people if you suspect something," he said.
But Face File is not just for kids trying to survive the craziest and most dangerous years of their lives.
Plenty of professionals -- realtors, leasing agents and financial advisers - meet people they do not know every week.
In February 2008, Lindsay Buziak, an attractive, 24-year-old Re/Max agent, met someone at a vacant five-bedroom home in Gordon Head, near Victoria, B.C.
The listed price of the home was nearly $1 million, and the potential client claimed to be in a hurry to make an offer.
The lure of a fast commission must have been too compelling to resist.
Buziak took the stranger to see the house. The stranger stabbed her to death.
A Face File photo may not have stopped this insanity, but Wilcox notes that had she "Faced" him, authorities would have had a lead.
More than a year later, the case remains unsolved.
Face File also aims to mitigate the risks involved in calling a plumber, an electrician or even someone coming to fix the AC.
In February 2001, an air-conditioning repairman knocked on the door of 22-year-old Ashley Ellerin, a former girlfriend of actor Ashton Kutcher, and allegedly stabbed her to death.
Michael Thomas Gargiulo, 32, was not arrested for the crime until July 2008.
In September, he pled not guilty to charges he murdered Ellerin and another Santa Monica, Calif., woman in her home, using the same routine.
Too bad there's not a photo of the perpetrator on a doorstep, awkward or silly as it might have seemed to take at the time.
Face File co-founder Cohen has a personal motto: "Never feel stupid playing it safe."
(Al's Emporium, written by Dow Jones Newswires columnist Al Lewis, offers commentary and analysis on a wide range of business subjects through an unconventional perspective. The column is published each Tuesday and Thursday at 9 a.m. ET. He can be reached at 201-938-5266 or by email at al.lewis@dowjones.com.)
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