Entrepreneur couple's stop-and-go system controls store access for pandemic safety
Damian and Tara Wright, like many others during the early days of the shutdown, realized it was hard to see inside shops to know if they could go in, given the restrictions placed on the number of people allowed in one place.
“We'd push our faces to the window, and think there was lots of room,” he said.
“But when one of us would go in, we'd often be asked to wait outside.”
Their walks to a local coffee shop sparked a proverbial light bulb moment when they realized there had to be a simple way to solve those slightly uncomfortable moments for retailers and customers.
Luckily, both were entrepreneurs with a talent for finding simple and easy solutions to unusual situations.
Wright is the founder of Wright XM Inc. (WXM), a Toronto-based studio that creates interactive technology-based solutions for experiential marketing campaigns, while his wife had just started her own freelance business as a creative director.
“When the pandemic hit, we were looking, at best, 10 to 15 new projects,” Wright said. “They went to zero.”
But by tapping into his connections with local developers and design engineers, the Wrights came up with a social-distancing solution for stores and coffee shops in the form of a traffic light.
“We knew it would be so easy to create a traffic light that could control who came in,” Wright said.
“I knew in my head what it would need to look like.”
Called TraffikFlo, the red-andgreen traffic light remotely connects to an app on a smartphone or tablet that staff can click on to change the light to red or green based on the number of customers in the space. This allows them to more easily monitor store traffic without having to dedicate an employee to the task.
The Wrights found their first customer, Jennifer Jackson, owner of Home Smith in Toronto, in June. The home decor retailer was just around the corner from the Wrights' home office.
“She really loved it, and got so many compliments from customers,” Damian said.
Soon after, Jackson's sister, Alison Fletcher, owner of the Cookery kitchenware stores, ordered lights for her four locations in Toronto and Montreal, and things grew from there.
The Wrights then set up an e-commerce site using Shopify Inc.'s technology to expand sales across Canada.
“What was really great is that Shopify got in contact with us to have our product in their Canadian retail hardware store,” Wright said.
“Last week, it expanded us into the U.S.”
He has also started working with local business associations in the United Kingdom, and is now selling TraffikFlo units to stores from Inverness, Scotland, to London.
“Our first sale there was to a small shop in Brighton that found out about it through a post on social media,” Wright said.
So far, the Wrights are happy to break even, but they expect they will get their investment back in the new year.
Their total investment was $100,000 including design, certification and production, and the TraffikFlo product sells for $99 including shipping.
When the dust settles, Damian is also hoping their idea will showcase what the couple can do when they put their creative minds together.
“Maybe in the future people will see why they want to work with us,” he said.
Entrepreneurial innovators such as the Wrights have popped up in all sorts of quarters during these uncertain times.
Kayla Isabelle, chief executive of Ottawa-based Startup Canada, points out that innovation isn't just about giant tech-backed disruptions.
“Micro innovation in small-business communities is being driven out of necessity,” she said.
“Something can be very, very small scale and really make a significant impact. They deserve an extra pat on the back.”
Plenty of examples of smallscale innovation abound.
In Edmonton, custom metalworking shop Brokel Stainless Ltd. turned to prefabricating hand-sanitizer stands and partitions for local salons and restaurants when there were none to be found elsewhere.
“We've had to be creative in looking at alternative solutions with the lockdown,” said Terry Whittingham, president.
“We're all trying to figure out how to keep businesses going while meeting safety requirements. It's also helped us all build a local network to help each other out.”
In Montreal, Audra Renyi, founder and chief executive of earAccess Inc., a social enterprise that provides affordable hearing aids and services, responded to the lockdown by making a transparent face mask called Canamasq that enables lip reading for people with hearing loss.
An added bonus is that the initiative has allowed her to employ locals to make the masks.
And in Kitchener, Ont., underwater robotics entrepreneur Sam Macdonald and partner Jeff Lotz at Deep Trekker Inc. responded to the pandemic by developing remote-controlled sanitization robots to clean hard-to-access spaces.
Isabelle said small-business innovators have a powerful narrative to share.
“We need to link buy local and local innovation together,” she said.
“Micro change creates a ripple effect that is changing entrepreneurship.”
Like many local entrepreneurs, the most rewarding part for the Wrights is that they have been able to meet so many local businesses.
“That's been the best thing,” Wright said.
“These people work so hard and are so fantastic. It's great to know we're really building a great community through this.”