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WATERLOO REGION — When COVID-19 caused a cascading wave of closures in March, tech firm TallyFi’s business vanished as well.
After all, clients using its wireless people counters — at places such as bars and nightclubs, museums, sporting events, festivals and water parks — were the very ones shutting their doors.
“We’re a company that counts large gatherings of people, so we immediately saw that as a problem,” said co-owner Ryan Walker. “Our entire client base stopped at that point. We put everybody on hold.”
With accounts paused and zero recurring subscription revenue coming in, Walker and co-owner Gil Pinheiro figured they’d take the time to work on product development.
But as restrictions began to ease, the calls started coming in from across North America and beyond from customers they’d never dealt with — retail stores and malls, casinos, small garden centres, even zoos. These businesses were able to reopen, provided they kept to strict capacity limits, and TallyFi’s technology had a new pandemic purpose.
“They’ve never had to deal with it before,” Walker said. “They’re finding us as a solution for that.” Now, many of TallyFi’s pre-pandemic clients are starting to reopen as well.
TallyFi is a modern take on the old-fashioned, hand-held mechanical counter. The wireless hand-held counters have dual count channels, and the user can add or remove counts as people come and go. Multiple devices are synced to provide accurate, real-time counts — this is especially helpful for a venue with multiple entrances.
All of the data is recorded and accessed on an easy-to-use dashboard. Analyzing attendance patterns can help clients schedule staff more efficiently or manage cleaning intervals, and statistical reports can demonstrate they’re abiding by government-mandated limits. Monthly TallyFi subscriptions cover single or multiple-device plans.
Walker said TallyFi provides an affordable, efficient system with durable devices that can be up and running in minutes using a client’s WiFi network.
Automated vision systems and sensors that offer counting features typically require expensive, fixed hardware, aren’t always accurate, and can prompt privacy concerns. There are mobile phone apps for counting people, but Walker said they can be impractical to use, and some don’t allow for data downloads. And do employers want their staff using $1,000 smartphones as counters?
TallyFi was founded six years ago by Walker, Pinheiro and Don McKenzie, who left the business in 2016. Walker and Pinheiro are its sole employees, and rent a couple of desks at the Communitech Hub to use when they’re not working remotely.
The lean operation belies TallyFi’s growing reach — its devices are counting between two million and 2.5 million people every week, in countries ranging from the United States and Canada to the United Kingdom, Australia, Finland and Singapore.
Future developments could include incorporating the ability to scan tickets into the counting device.
Whether some of TallyFi’s newest customers become long-term clients could depend on how long capacity restrictions remain in place. Still, the new sales — especially from the United States, where many jurisdictions reopened quickly — came at the right time, when many of the company’s pre-pandemic clients were still dark.
“We always assumed they’d come back online eventually,” Walker said. “But it was definitely a relief.”
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