A Fife firm has launched a low cost solution to help businesses to keep customers safe.
Tayport-based FifeX has made its name installing displays at major visitor attractions.
When Covid-19 hit, work ground to a halt and managing director Paul Neil admitted it has been a challenging time.
‘It has been completely different’
He said: “It’s been a lot tougher. We’ve got some really supportive clients who allowed us to continue to work on other projects.
“Normally we’d send four to six weeks building something and it would get installed.
“But we’ve been building things to get them half ready and working on something else. It has been completely different.”
FifeX, which employs three full-time and two-part time staff, has avoided making redundancies but it has taken a financial hit.
New people counting device
However, the company has taken on the challenges presented in the past year to developing QCounter – a people-counter system.
The fully automated device monitors the volume of customers. Using a traffic light system, it alerts people to when it is safe to enter.
“That period last summer where we opened back up, we were visiting clients,” the managing director said.
“You could see how people were struggling to manage parts of buildings they couldn’t use because of Covid restrictions.
“There are other things out there in the market that run into the thousands. We wanted to make this accessible for the smaller venues and shops.”
Paul hoped demand will be high as more businesses reopen.
Origins in St Andrews
FifeX will mark its 20th anniversary next year, but the business has not always been based at its current Tayport home.
Having been founded by two former St Andrews University students, they moved to their current premises in 2007.
Paul took over as managing director in 2018. He said: “The university was making a lot of technology advancements and nobody knew about them.
“The original idea was to set up a company with the aim of taking these things to science centres and museums.
“It didn’t really work and the guys began to look at visitor displays and it went from there.”
Paul is happy life is starting to return to normal.
“It looks promising that things will pick up,” he added.
“We’ll definitely be glad when things are reopen and we can get back to the pace we were used to before.”
