An Isle of Wight businessman has turned his home and garden into an impromptu demonstration lab and an international communication studio to keep in touch with clients across the globe during the COVID-19 crisis.
Shanklin-based Innovative Physics is used to world travel as part of its core business delivering AI solutions in the medical, homeland security and nuclear sectors. But with many countries in lockdown, travel severely restricted and face-to-face meetings impossible, the company has been forced to look at new ways of promoting its in-demand equipment to prospective clients – not an easy task when you are demonstrating award-winning equipment to pinpoint and grade radiation!
In response, chief executive Mike Anderson has risen to the challenge by turning his home into a demonstration area and working with his daughter and company business development officer Victoria Anderson-Matthew to assist clients across the globe.
Mike, Victoria and Application Physicist, Michael MacLeod, link up the conferencing software to the company’s products – usually the Hot Spot Locator Lite (HSL Lite) used in the detection and imaging of gamma radiation in real-time – to give live working demos of the equipment’s capabilities. And they even have small – and completely safe – quantities of caesium on hand to provide low-level gamma radiation for detection.
In one recent conference call, a simultaneous technical demonstration and discussion of the HSL’s capabilities was given to clients in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Victoria said:
“The outbreak is undoubtedly presenting us with challenges, wifi signal can be a real challenge, but overall it is going okay. You just have to keep going and keep looking for solutions wherever and however you can find them.
“We are in the middle of two projects for China, which started just after they went into lockdown, so all communication has been online. While this has worked satisfactorily, it would obviously have been better to have had face-to-face meetings in China.
Article continues below this advertisement “There remains a keen interest in the Hotspot Locators and hopefully following further home demos shortly there will be some new orders on the horizon.
“As a company, we are – like all others – just looking at new ways of maintaining business as usual – or at least as close to usual as we can in these unprecedented times. We hope that other companies are okay and are doing well.”
Looks like the garden could do with a tidy up a bit