After more than 15 years refining her skills in sales, marketing and leadership, including eight years of applications engineering in the robotics automation industry, Sam put her McMaster University Commerce degree and passion for technology to work.
In 2010, she partnered with Jeff Lotz to bring Deep Trekker’s underwater robotics to the world. From the basement workshop to a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility to shipments to over 85 countries, Sam and her team have expanded to produce six fully submersible robotic product lines.
When not traveling the world discovering her customers’ unique uses for Deep Trekker’s robots, Sam can be found mountain biking, scuba diving or flying small airplanes, enjoying life on land, under the sea, and in the air.
How did you get involved with aquaculture?
Partly by accident. I live in the Great Lakes area of Ontario, Canada, which has thousands of shipwrecks. I was looking for a tool to go shipwreck hunting and met up with my now business partner, Jeff Lotz, who had made an ROV for his college project.
Together, we came up with the idea for our flagship product the DTG2 ROV. After 18 months of development Jeff had something very viable, so we put up a very basic website.
Our first sales came through a fellow in Norway who was selling lighting systems to Norwegian salmon farms. He originally had some competitor built ROVs that had quickly broken down.
In 2011, he became our reseller and the first year we ended up selling 213 of our ROVs in Norway. After that, we found a South American reseller and expanded into Chile.
How did you finance your growth?
We self-financed to get the company off the ground and in the first few years we strove to keep our costs down. During the development process we built a number of prototypes before arriving at what became the DTG2. Since then we have continued to refine the design and make it more robust. By and large we’ve always been self-funding.
Where are you manufacturing the units?
We are currently manufacturing everything in-house in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. We currently have 43 employees and we’ve grown the engineering department to 17 folks. We’re lucky to be able to draw from the University of Waterloo, which is one of the best engineering schools in Canada.
Does the Canadian government help you at all?
We take advantage of the SR&D tax credits, we’ve also been involved in the programme called IRAP and we took advantage of a “built in Canada” innovation programme where if you develop a new technology the government will pay for another government organisation to buy the units, so we’re actually working with the Canadian navy at the moment.
Where was your R&D carried out?
Jeff did all of the design for the DTG2 and the DTX2, which is the bigger brother to the DTG2. Our original flagship products. We had customers who were trying to use our products to do pipe inspections, so Jeff had been working with a fellow named Sean on a pipe crawler, so we took him on and finished the designs for the DT340 pipe crawler.
How many models do you currently manufacture?
We make five: two swimming robots (ROVs) the latest products the DTG3 and REVOLUTION ROV, two crawlers, the DT340 and DT320 pipe crawler and the DT640 Utility Crawler which has magnetised metal wheels that allow it to crawl along the steel hull of a ship.
We also make a pod camera that goes inside fish cages. The camera allows 360 degrees rotation both horizontally and vertically and it’s equipped with lights and an oxygen sensor.
Are you developing more models as we speak?
Always. With our DTG3 and the REVOLUTION ROV we’re building in more station-keeping capabilities and more autonomous functions. We’re also moving over to a fully digital platform so we can innovate sensors, internet-based platforms, and plug and play capabilities to incorporate a lot of advanced water quality sensors and imaging sonars.
On the DTG3 we have a modified arm that we can apply a spring-loaded net patch that will keep the sea lions out for a while until the net can be repaired.
How many countries do you sell to?
I think at the latest count we were selling to 85 countries. We were international straight out of the gates with our sales to Norway. Quite frankly we sold outside of North America for most of our early days.
What are some advantages of using ROVs in aquaculture?
First off, the ease of use. Being able to perform inspections when you need to do it in an easy way. Divers are still necessary if you need to do repairs or if you’re setting up new nets. But, for basic inspections, the Deep Trekker is out of the box and ready to go in thirty seconds.
You can carry it to the dock. There’s no need to bring a generator and there’s nothing to plug in. You just connect the controller to the ROV and you’re in the water. Plus, the ROV is much less stressful for the fish than putting a diver in the cage, and you can disinfect an ROV in a much more aggressive fashion than a diver so, again, it’s better for the fish.
As the female president of a technology hardware company, you’re fairly unusual. Has that affected your business in any negative way?
No. In a way it’s been very positive. Because women in technology and robotics and fish farming are fairly unique, I tend to get a lot of attention. The world is changing. I don’t think that I’ve been disrespected in any way.
I make it my business to make sure I know what I’m talking about. You’ve probably noticed that, at this conference, (Aquaculture America 2019) there are a lot more women than in other conferences.
With a name like Sam I often get phone calls for people looking for Sam. When I tell them that I’m Sam, there’s often an odd pause. But apart from that there haven’t been many issues.
What’s next for Deep Trekker?
Just further development of our products. We’re looking at adding more intelligence to the machines.
Intelligence and autonomy are the buzzwords now. Plus, we’re building out our technology, looking at connectivity and autonomy. We will enable our podcams to network and operate from long distances offshore. As fish farms move farther from shore, they will require systems with increased automation. We need to have an ROV that we can run from onshore.
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