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Reinventing the Office of the Future

How SnapCab pivoted its product line from meeting pods to individual isolation and testing pods is being featured by Export Development Canada (EDC) in a national advertising campaign, from now until the end of October.

June 16, 2021

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The national campaign titled, Business as Unusual, highlights SnapCab, along with two other EDC clients, who shifted their business models to support those living in a pandemic, and post-pandemic world.

SnapCab manufactures mobile privacy pods for the open office environment. The company has been a client of EDC’s for several years, and EDC chose to feature SnapCab due to its fast and innovative response to help.

When the pandemic hit, founder and CEO Glenn Bostock knew that small meeting rooms would no longer be of interest – at least for now.

“We quickly realized we had the design and manufacturing capabilities to develop medical testing pods for use by healthcare workers,” Bostock said. “We started connecting with local medical experts for advice and guidance because we had no background in the medical field, and we knew we wanted to help.”

SnapCab designed and developed several prototypes for medical testing pods and is now working with CannonDesign to bring a final product to market.

But, SnapCab’s pivot didn’t end there. With much of the office-bound workforce working from home, SnapCab took its Meet 4 and Meet 6 collaboration-style pod products and redesigned them into individual office pods. In addition, the team developed a Meet 2 home office pod, as well as the Consult – a two-person pod designed with a glass partition to provide a safe place for face-to-face interactions.

In fact, the Consult has been coined the “God Pod” by the Globe and Mail, CTV News and other national media for its use in a church in Ottawa.

“We saw the need for people to return to the office, and we realized that our products were so flexible that we could help reinvent the office of the future by simply reworking our current pod designs into something more,” Bostock said.

Soon, SnapCab developed a “Kit of Parts” that included several pod designs with customizable frames, panels, finishes, colors, furniture, accessories and more. Plus, all SnapCab pods can connect to the SnapCab Connects hinging wall system that can be used to create small group work areas – a signature product to the pod market.

“Something we’ve learned is that people are not going to go back to work the same way that they did before the pandemic,” Bostock said. “There’s a need now for less office space, but space that is much more flexible where all offices and walls are mobile. That’s why we have designed this ‘Kit of Parts’ – to give people the tools they need to return to work.”

All in all, Bostock’s focus before the pandemic and throughout this pivot has been to be useful to customers, colleagues and the community.

“One thing we’ve learned from this is: start with trying to figure out how you can be useful and do something to help,” Bostock says in the EDC commercial. “The energy around that creates people who want to work with you and partners who want to help you. Look for the upside and build on that.”

On SnapCab being selected amongst thousands of EDC clients to be featured in the campaign, Bostock feels nothing short of grateful.

“To know that SnapCab was given an opportunity like this – it’s truly once in a lifetime,” he says.

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For more information or for interview requests, please contact Carla Bostock at Carla.Bostock@SnapCab.com