MERO TECHNOLOGIES

Nathan Mah and business partner Cole MacDonald co-founded Mero as students at Queen’s University in 2017. Now based in Toronto, the company has grown to include 14 employees. They provide stick-on sensors for consumables like soap, paper towels and hand sanitizer, enabling property managers to respond to shortages and manage their staff more effectively. “We route cleaners around buildings in an intelligent manner so they’re making efficient use of their time,” Mah explains. Essentially, Mero users are alerted to low levels of soap, paper towels or other products through a data analytics platform, allowing cleaners to focus on areas of need instead of following a set route.

In standard commercial building management practices, usable supplies are often thrown out due to routine-based cleaning methods. A half-full bottle of soap or a partially used roll of paper towels may be replaced as per a daily schedule, for example, leading to unnecessary waste. Not only does this have a negative impact on the environment, it creates a financial loss that adds up over time. Detailing their success, Mah asserts that Mero has helped one customer save 1,500 rolls of paper towel from the landfill in a single year.

“Our product is perfectly suited for almost any commercial building in North America, and we want to continue focusing on that vision and providing more sustainable and healthy environments indoors,” Mah says. Innovation is at the root of everything Mero does, from their technology to the economic and environmental impact of their business, and Mah believes it’s critical to the success of any new business.

“Every company has a specific niche that they’re able to solve better than anyone in the world, and innovation is at the centre of solving that problem,” Mah says. “For some companies, it’s intellectual property or an algorithm but for us, it’s creating new ways of presenting data. We’re offering a new data set that hasn’t existed in these commercial buildings, ever. It becomes a new currency to help customers save money and have a better return-on-investment on these products.”