Pioneer child safety band deal for North company

Sep 4 2008 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

A TECHNOLOGY firm has landed a deal to sell its pioneering child safety device in 550 travel agents across the country. Blyth telecoms company DataSMS has won a contract to supply its groundbreaking Tag n Go wristband system to Co-operative Travel outlets up and down the country.

The deal is the latest glowing endorsement for the device which provides instant communication between a lost child and their parents or group leaders if they become separated during an outing.

Children are given a brightly coloured wristband containing a unique code number which their parent, teacher, group leader or carer registers with a central electronic database at the start of the trip.

In July it became the only device of its kind to receive official accreditation from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and is used by forces in Surrey, the Met, Thames Valley , Kent and Grampian.

Co-operative Travel will initially offer the wristband free to families buying holidays between this month and August 2009.

It will then introduce a small charge in the remaining two years of the contract for the device which has been designed to work internationally.

The contract is worth around £120,000 to DataSMS in the first year and is expected to help the two-year-old company turn a profit in 2009.

Meanwhile the business is currently in talks with a large car rental firm to apply the technology to a device which can retrieve lost keys which can cost around £150 to replace.

Managing director Terry Munley said: “We only launched the product last year and we have had lot of interest and moved it forward quite a bit.”

Earlier this year Surrey Police bought 20,000 of DataSMS’s wristbands to hand out at events, while Northumbria Police is also reportedly interested in using the system.