Bristol lockdown business goes global
Spacebands were formed during the pandemic to help with social distancing, but the company wants to go much further
Last updated 28th Apr 2021
We've been hearing how a Bristol business set up during the first lockdown has become a global success story.
Spacebands was formed by Harry Kimberley-Bowen and Ronan Finnegan who went to school in Bath and are both now 26, to make electronic wristbands which beep when they get too close together, to help with social distancing.
They only started in March last year but now sell the wristbands to some of the world's biggest companies including Amazon, Sony and Panasonic as well as the NHS here in the UK.
As the company continues to go from strength to strength we caught up with Harry to hear how the whole thing started.
"We started the business back in March last year amongst the first lockdown," he tells us.
"Both Ronan and I were in full time jobs at the time. Ronan had a strong background in tech, launching his own apps in the past. I had a good sales background working with start ups.
"So I had the idea to create a wearable (device) to help with social distancing and contract tracing in various environments and when we looked at the market there were only a few players in that space, but there was a clear gap for something to launch, which was affordable and accessible to all sorts of businesses, whether it's a small council office down the road or a multinational company."
As well as the companies mentioned above and the NHS, Spacebands are also sold to the Ministry of Defence here in the UK.
To date they have sold more than 50,000 wristbands to more than 1,000 companies all around the world and have brought on two more members of staff.
They are now set to launch a new product next month designed to help with health and safety, across working environments and schools among other places.
The current Spacebands store data of which wristbands have come into close contact and for how long, allowing employers to know, if there is a coronavirus outbreak in the office, exactly who needs to self isolate and who doesn't.
"Having Spacebands in place they now know exactly who has come into contact and as a result, we've had many user cases when employers only have to send home one or two people to self isolate as opposed to 20-30 people in a team," Harry says.
Regarding how busy the last year has been, Harry jokes it has been "hard to stay sane" at times.
"Ronan and I have actually surprisingly been relatively chilled through it," he says.
"It's been many, many late nights, working through the night.
"We now have a warehouse facility but at the start we were literally packing orders from our bedroom and sending them out which was absolutely mental."
They day we spoke Spacebands were taking on a new starter and Harry hopes the business can continue to grow.
If you want to find out more about the company you can do so here.