The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are set to kick off their 2025 season on Thursday and a new addition at Princess Auto Stadium is ready to make its debut as well.
The club’s new ‘merchbot’ in the stadium’s concourse will be helping Bombers fans get decked out in blue and gold attire. While the automated merchandise machine is a new addition to home games for the Bombers, the company that built it, Vidir, has deep roots in Manitoba.
The company, founded in 1979 in Arborg, Man., has a long history with co-owner Carissa Rempel’s family.
“It (Vidir) started with my grandfather who saw a need in the area for both good employment for machinists who were moving to the area — immigrating from other countries — as well as a need for a machine shop in the area,” Rempel told Global Winnipeg.
Most of Vidir’s storage products continue to be manufactured in Arborg, a town in Manitoba’s Interlake, just over 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg, although things have certainly grown since the late 1970s.
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Vidir makes vertical storage machines that serve up specific items as requested through the company’s software — a perfect fit for an a la carte merch system at events like CFL games.
Machinery like the merchbot also keeps track of inventory, sensing what’s been removed from each shelf.
Rempel said machines designed, built, and shipped from Arborg are in locations across the globe, including with clients like Disney, Walmart and even the White House.
“We’re in pharmaceuticals, we’re in construction, we’re in retail we’re in government. We have machines in all types of places all over the world,” she said.
Vidir, however, is focused on smaller communities, with staff in Arborg and nearby Teulon as well as a small city in Pennsylvania.
“We can provide a lot of things that maybe wouldn’t be able to be there otherwise, whether that’s different clubs or different services that maybe wouldn’t be able to run in those small communities without the help of a larger employer.”
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