How is a beacon like a freckle? Each stands on its own, but is part of a larger network.

That’s the thinking behind the name of Juice Mobile’s new spin-off company, Freckle IoT (internet of things), a separate entity that will focus on new technologies like retail beacons, wearables and mobile vending machines.

Neil Sweeney, CEO of Juice Mobile, will lead the Freckle team, comprised at launch of four or five developers. Sales will be handled by Juice Mobile and led by recently announced sales lead Rebecca Shropshire in Canada.

In the short term the two companies will continue to share the same office, but down the line Sweeney sees one of the teams getting a separate space as headcount grows.

The standalone company means the team will be able to focus on the new products, Sweeney explains.

“In order for it to get its own focus it needed its own agenda,” he says. “Freckle to me is what Juice was three years ago. It needed a flexible team to get it off the ground.”

Freckle is launching with a beacon network deployed in partnership with OOH companies across Canada. Beacons are low-cost, battery-operated pieces of technology that send out Bluetooth signals from where they are placed. Over the summer Swirl, a Boston-based beacon marketing company, launched a beacon network in five Hudson’s Bay stores.

Mobile publishers can integrate Freckle’s software development kit into their apps to make them proximity-enabled. The network will operate as an opt-in system for consumers, rather than a push-style program.