Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
When we heard yesterday that a Canadian digital signage company was having troubles, shutting it doors, having trouble raising funds, and other such ilk, it was a typical rumour that had one little nugget of truth and then, as rumours tend to do, escalated and took on a life of its own.
The victim of the rumour in this case was Adflow Networks, located in Burlington, Ontario, and much of the rumour was, indeed, garbage.
We talked this morning to Mike Abbott, Adflow president,, who enlightened us as to the truth of the matter.
“We had a great year last year, almost doubling our revenue, and are on track for a similar great year this year again with our core digital signage business,” says Abbott. “What we have done is put on hold our Adflow Health kiosk business which involved ad-supported blood pressure machine kiosks.
“While there is a lot of interest, this calls for expensive production, and, while we have a lot of interest, market conditions for raising production capital are not acceptable to us at present.
“Adflow Health is a separate company/venture, formed to develop a digital biometric testing kiosk over the last two years, a kiosk that is best-of-breed and ready for volume production.
“Due to continuing delay in obtaining the necessary production funding and requisite long term commitments from content and retail partners, Adflow Health is holding off on its production and deployment of the Personal Health Center until such time that the market demand is in line with costs of the kiosk production.
“We continue to believe that Adflow Health’s biometric testing kiosk product and our patented platform offer tremendous benefits to consumers, retailers, employers, healthcare providers and brands. However, the market conditions necessary for a successful launch must be present. We look forward to making our product available to the market when we feel these conditions are right.”
While there were commitments to deploy the kiosks in a couple of retail chains already in place, Abbott says that the chains are disappointed, but understanding. They know that a lot of capital is required.
As for shutting its doors, Abbott says that there is absolutely no truth in that rumour. The company, with approximately 40 employees, is on track for another record year. As usual, almost everything is done from the Burlington headquarters, with U.S. satellite virtual offices operating as usual.
“And the health kiosk network is not dead. We know we have the best product but it is strictly on hold until we have the right funding, the right production facilities and the right market conditions.”
February 20th, 2013 at 12:11 @549
So this would mean that the huge 2011 announcement on RiteAId was nothing more than intent? And that they were sucked in by Stayhealthy on the other deal, and blew their cash trying to make that happen?
February 21st, 2013 at 17:32 @772
Wow, 150 employees and only 62 on LinkedIn….very low LinkedIn adoption for a technology company….
April 30th, 2013 at 19:55 @871
[…] product like it on the market. Adflow Networks announced its own system 18 months ago (though the rollout has been stalled). And SoloHealth is rolling out a network similar to […]