On September 25th, eMan presented its services at a professional fair in the USA for the first time ever, in a conference on automotive displays in Livonia (Michigan). The conference is pretty technical and has a strong focus on hardware solutions, but it provided us the opportunity to connect with experts and decision makers from great companies working in the infotainment field.
eMan attended the Automotive Display Conference in Detroit
On the logistics side, our Automotive Division Director Lukas Krizko flew from Prague and I flew from Houston to Detroit, where we would spent nearly one week. The conference Vehicle Display Symposium was hosted by the Burton Manor center, which provided a cozy, familiar environment which facilitated the interaction between all the participants and exhibitors. Numberswise, there were 300+ participants at the conference and 90+ exhibitors. In total, some 500 people wandered around the event.
Next to us, companies offering such different products as adhesives and coatings; TFT, LCD, CTP, VFD and OLED displays; measurement lasers and infrared sensors; etc. Among the most appealing for the overall public audience were: the flexible and free form displays from companies like Futaba or Sharp; the touch-screen and touch-less haptics solutions by Tanvas; the integration of fingerprint activation and voice processing by Synaptics; and the HUD demos by Visteon and Polytronix.
The first day, I had the opportunity to address a 2 min pitch to the plenary, introducing our company and asking the audience to visit our booth for more information. As a result of that call or just because of the natural traffic on the exhibit floor, we received many visits during the whole event.
I would like to highlight some of the carmakers we got in touch with: Ford, Fiat, Chrysler Automotive, and Subaru. We also met some important OEMs like Visteon, Continental, Panasonic, Magneti Marelli, and Bosch. Our booth also received a visit from a relevant expert and key executive from Waymo (formerly Google Car), which was quite thrilling especially if it ever leads to some future collaboration.
Overall, I can say that the event was a success for eMan. Now, it is on me and Lukas to leverage all those contacts and translate them into real business opportunities. We are on it!
In the meantime, let me also mention the great success of our eMan duck. All our toys had flown away before noon on the first day of the conference. And some of them for sure flew beyond Detroit in the following days. Who knows where they might be now!
