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Scamming your way onto the ski lift? - RFID technology could rat you out |
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It’s unlikely you’ve passed by a Wave Passport reader, but if Ken Berry can help it you’ll eventually do so. Perhaps at a gym, or a ski hill, at a university cafeteria, or at a convention.
“Passport Technologies is the name of our company,” says Berry, who is still in the process of settling into a new location on College Street in Richmond. “The reader has our logo and looks like a sign, but it contains an antenna and operates with invisible radio frequency energy. It functions like a bar code reader.” But you don’t have to stop to insert a card.
RFID or Radio Frequency Identification is the heart of the company that Montreal-raised Berry started up just three years ago. And RFID has everything to do with controlling or monitoring access to public spaces and venues. “Our products are unique-designed and built here — and we’re the only Canadian company dedicated to public venues,” says Berry.
“The technology itself isn’t new,” he explains. “It was first used by the American army in WWII in order to monitor their ‘assets’ in war zones, essentially identify vehicles and machinery. In Europe, ski resorts have been using it for the last decade. What I’m doing with it now is new, but I’ve been working with RFID for 18 years.”
Berry, who’s old enough to play for Last Chance, a Richmond-based old timers hockey team, has been fascinated by things mechanical and electrical since he was a child. “When I was eight or nine,” he recalls, “my grandfather gave me a Radio Shack electronic kit (still available in stores today) and I ended up building my own radio. But I loved — and still love — toys like Lego and Meccano. I loved taking things apart and putting them together again.”
As a teenager, Berry performed well in school and was as successful in his academic courses as in his woodworking. Still, he opted for the school of life. “I didn’t graduate from high school. I did go down to McGill one day and sat in on an engineering class, just to be sure, but formal education wasn’t for me. I love learning. I’ve never stopped learning. But I wasn’t learning enough in school, nor what I wanted to learn.”
The moment he stopped school he started working in a small electronics shop. He discovered he had an entrepreneurial side. “When I was 17, computers were just starting to appear in people’s homes. I started selling Apple clones I’d built myself. I’d buy the components, assemble them and sell them to people who wanted a computer without the hassle of putting it together, or of spending much more for a brand name computer. I wasn’t doing anything illegal, but my boss wasn’t happy about it.”
The next few years saw Berry take summer jobs at a bicycle shop and winter jobs in electronics stores. “I loved bikes, the mechanics of them, and I loved cycling just as much,” says Berry. “I cycled from Montreal to Toronto and Montreal to Ottawa a number of times. I also cycled, with a friend, from Vancouver to Banff in five days.”
Before turning 20 Berry discovered that he had another talent. He was also good at selling. The small electronics company that took him on as a sales rep was his place of work for the next 20 years, until 2005. It was during this period that he moved to the Townships.
“The company grew... and I’d gotten in on the ground floor,” he explains. “My employee number was 7. I had seniority and I was versatile. I could do installations, I was giving technical training, and I was selling. At first I was driving all over Quebec, but when the company started breaking the province up into sales territories, I always had first choice. I picked the Townships. My grandparents had had a place near Sutton, and later near Lake Massawippi. I had always loved coming down here. In 1991 my wife and I bought an old farm near Trenholmville where we lived until just recently.”
The decision to strike out on his own was both inevitable and difficult. “I always wanted to have my own business,” says Berry. “But it’s been harder than I ever expected it to be. After three years we still haven’t reached our break even point, but the good news is that the company has shown itself to be viable. We’ve had a couple of disappointments but we’ve also attracted a great deal of interest.”
One of Berry’s disappointments was the lack of sales to ski hills — an area in which RFID had a proven track record in Europe. It was a proven idea and seemed promising, even if European skiers tend to go to a resort where they stay for a week or more, while skiers in Eastern North America are more likely to go out just for the day. The different pattern also means different problems.
Typically, ski hills estimate that 5 per cent or more of the people using their facilities fudge their way onto ski lifts, perhaps getting on with no ticket, or with a used ticket. One trick, used by holders of season passes, is to arrive at the hill, identify themselves and say their pass had been forgotten at home. The hill issues them a day pass which they then give to a friend, so that two people are skiing that day on one season pass.
Passport Technologies, using RFID, had the solution. “The skier would be issued a small tag which, as he passed by a Wave Passport reader would identify him and relay his presence to a computer running our software program. The benefit to the skier is that he doesn’t have to worry about showing his tag — it can be kept deep in his pockets and still be electronically read. One benefit for the ski hill is that the technology cannot be forged. A temporary day lift given to a forgetful season pass holder could, using the software-simultaneously cancel the ‘forgotten’ season pass.”
Berry invested heavily in building a prototype only to find that ski hills which had initially been interested, finally decided that the system was just too expensive.
But one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor, and while Berry’s system didn’t sell on ski hills it has ended up selling in gyms, about two dozen so far around the province
“A simple start up system for a gym costs about $10 000 to $12 000. If I’m lucky I’ll be doing a lot more gyms. At the beginning of April, the Ontario Racquet Club in Toronto, one of the largest fitness facilities in the country, agreed to purchase our system.”
In 2006, when Innovilia (a trade show focusing on innovation in business) was held in Sherbrooke, it was Berry who was asked to provide the “cards” that those attending the show carried with them to gain access to services and activities for which they had subscribed. The cards were RFID and helped make sure that people ended up where they were supposed to be.
In the three years since setting up shop, Passport Technologies has drawn inquiries from as far away as Chili and Korea. Interest has also come from sources closer to home; Berry has already had discussions with Bishop’s University about the possibility of using RFID on its campus.
Even nearer to Berry’s new College Street office in Richmond is Gym Confort on Main Street, which is owned by Michel Desmarais. Perhaps not surprisingly, the two entrepreneurs met playing hockey and that is where Desmarais learned about Passport Technologies.
“I opened the gym about three years ago,” says Desmarais. “It’s a small gym and I don’t always have a trainer on the premises. I had been using a combination code system to give members access to the gym. We’ve just recently installed Ken’s RFID system. We had one or two little bugs but overall I’m quite pleased. For one thing, I now know exactly who has been in the gym. It’s proving to be a good system.”
Ken Berry smiles when told of his hockey teammate’s endorsement. “It’s nice to hear that. I consider Mike almost a partner. When we work with clients, like Confort Gym, it’s towards a common goal and our approach is that working together, like partners, we get the results we want... Today, in business, you have to be working together, in partnership, if you hope to accomplish anything.”
By Nick Fonda
April 9, 2008 |
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Montreal Canadiens
