Fredericton Engineer Develops New Digital Billboard Tech
As an engineer running his own engineering consultancy Frederic Mond Inc. in Fredericton, Alex Motamed says he hasn’t always been a businessman.
But after discovering the need in advertising for a more flexible and versatile digital billboard technology, he’s stepped out of his technical comfort zone into the world of manufacturing startups.
PixelWrap got its start a year ago and with a solid prototype developed, Motamed is now trying to get early adopters on board with the idea.
We checked in with him to see how things are going so far:
How did PixelWrap get started?
We are actually an industrial consultancy company. We provide engineering solutions and design modelling for different industries. We started a new line of business for electronic urban advertising hardware and we decided to work on some solutions for urban advertising like LED billboards and other new technologies. We have worked on a couple of products. One of them was PixelWrap … I think the things we have done are new in this industry and we are very happy that we’re doing this in Fredericton and Atlantic Canada.
The idea for PixelWrap came from a background in engineering. I’ve worked in the LED industry with LED billboards for six years. I’ve found a couple of big problems in this industry because the LED billboards are really sizeable, they’re really heavy. You have lots of problems with them because there’s lots of cost to different aspects of them. For instance, installation, the after-sale service. You need a lot of people working on them.
So I decided why not change this technology to a newer one, to have easier installation. We decided to make PixelWrap. It’s actually a free-size display. You can wrap any surface, indoor or outdoor, any size and turn any surface into a giant billboard or advertising board of information.
The idea is pretty cool and we’re working on developing this idea. We are looking for investors and we need to fulfill many safety standards in this field. I think we’re doing well because now we’ve made our second prototype.
How did you end up working on this here?
I didn’t have any idea how to commercialize this. I was an engineer but I didn’t have any idea how to be a businessman. We participated in some programs for startups here and then we decided to make our own prototype. We made the prototype in Fredericton in my home. It’s a sort of home-grown technology. We have developed that until this stage. We are in a semi-commercialized [stage]. We’re ready to mass produce, get orders from customers but we need more support. We’re now actually looking for sponsors and investors.
Why is this technology particularly useful?
I think the scope of the application is very large. We are now focused on outdoor advertising especially for companies that currently have paper billboards. We can easily change their billboards to digital ones without any special structures. We can wrap the billboards easily.
How complex is the technology itself? How does it compare cost-wise with traditional billboards?
The current billboards cost about $4000 to $7000 per square meter. Ours is only $2000. I think we can have good competition with them. If we get enough orders, we can reduce the price. We have talked to some suppliers out of Canada, especially in China and Malaysia as sub-contractors because we know we cannot make all the pieces here. We need them to economize our product. We’ve ordered some prototypes from them. They can supply our materials at very low cost and acceptable quality.
Are there any limitations of the technology?
We developed and designed the control board and circuits ourselves. Our control boards can accept text and videos, any graphic effects. I don’t know any limitations in comparison with others but the hardware product needs to be tested in the real world to find out what problems it has. We need to see them on the battlefield.
So you’re looking for the first people who will get them out into the real world?
Yes, we need some early adopters.
How are going about getting funding?
We have applied for some funding … The main problem [potential investors] have is they’re looking for those early adopters. They say ‘do you have customers? Has anyone bought your product or not?’ That’s a concern because manufacturing doesn’t have connotations because they say we want a lot of money, we need a place for manufacturing, need a lot of tools so in comparison with online businesses or cybermarkets and apps or software, we need a lot of investment. Investors are very curious about having customers or not.
Have you had that interest from early adopters yet?
We’ve talked with big brands like Pattison, which is the biggest outdoor advertiser in Canada and some cities in the United States. They’re very positive about it but they need to see a plug-in product. They don’t need to see a prototype … They need some after-sale service so they wouldn’t pay anything for a prototype. It’s a closed loop for us. We’re asking for funds for development and the funders say ‘do you have any customers?’ and if we say no, then again and again it goes. But we need more negotiations. They want to be sure that this money will be back in the future.
How are you going to get out of that loop?
Since we haven’t found enough support yet, we’re looking at support in other provinces. We’re found an accelerator in Mississauga. They can provide a workshop for startups that are manufacturers and they also provide tools and mentoring. It’s very tempting to move to Mississauga but we really like this piece of country, especially Fredericton. That’s why we moved here. The first concern we have is a place to have a workshop to develop product more and more.
What’s your ideal situation going forward?
I’ve been looking for a place for a small workshop, a small production plant to develop the current prototype more and more. I’m looking at six months for that and after that, if we could have any first adopters or early companies prepared to spend for our product, we could rapidly find our market.