How these fast-growing Canadian companies stayed afloat during COVID-19

If some small, rose-colored part of you imagines back to the COVID spring of 2020 and thinks,

Was it really all that bad?

here’s a sobering fact:

in April alone, a single month of lockdown, Canada lost two million jobs, according to Statistics Canada.

Between retail, service, restaurants, and millions of gig-economy contracts,

it seemed like a race to the bottom for the country’s customer-centric industries.

So a slew of Growth and Startup companies had no choice but to don their creative caps to strategize about how to keep their businesses afloat.

Here are a few of their approaches.

Diversify product line

For Montreal-based Theatrixx Technologies (No. 307 on Growth 2020),

which manufactures and distributes audiovisual equipment for the (hard-hit) events and performing arts industries,

a COVID-specific technology provided an unlikely springboard for the firm’s overall product sales.

On a business trip to Taiwan,

Theatrixx president Jacques Tessier spotted a device, offered by a Theatrixx supplier, called the “temperature tablet.”

When a person stands in front of the device, it measures their basal body temperature using a small camera-and-monitor system.