ISA recap?

[CES020]

This was our first trip to ISA and I have mixed feelings about it. Part of me was excited and overwhelmed by the vast amount of stuff. Really, really cool stuff. Flatbed printers printing 2,700 sq. ft per hour? Seriously? Who needs that much stuff printed? Nice package deals for a printer and Zund cutter for only $490,000 or something like that. Too bad we didn't bring the pickup truck, we could have gotten a couple of those... The printing stuff was incredible. Oh, and the Miller weld master thingy that automated hemming and grommetting banners was really slick. Now I know how places print and hem banners for almost nothing now. Because they have cool stuff like that.

From a technology standpoint, I was dazzled.

However, we're new to printing in house, and we went to see and talk to people about materials and get some important tips or tricks from the people "in the know" that are normally at the shows we've attended in the past. Sadly, those people didn't seem to be around. I searched and searched for 3M, only to find out they didn't come. They decided to let their resellers talk about their products. Oracal? They can hand you a brochure and tell you to pick off the material selector page. Went to Avery, same thing "Use our brochure to select the materials". Went to Glantz, "Take this 3M brochure for material selections". We went into probably dozens of booths where the entire staff were chatting amongst themselves and with all the touching and picking up anything we could, it didn't interest them at all. It looked like a lot of the people working the booths weren't that interested in trying to gain new customers. Hexis was selling their material swatch book for $50? So I have to buy a swatch book to see your materials that I buy from you? How about give me one and if there's something in there I like (which they did have some cool, unique stuff), I'll buy a roll of material from you? If I don't have your book on my desk, I can't show it to customers, and if I can't show it to customers, I'm about 100% positive they won't pick anything from it.

We walked into one of our supplier's booths that we specifically went to see. Not a person in the booth, but us two and 8, yes, 8 employees. Picked through material samples for close to 10 minutes. Not a single person came over. Really odd.

Seemed like it was a different level of show than I'm used to. This looked like a very corporate show with big deals being made and not much interest in helping the little guy. That's fine too, I just didn't know that in advance. Live and learn. Is that how ISA is in general? Is SGIA the same way?

On the other hand, the people at the HP booth, Onyx, Evonik, and Summa were outstandingly helpful and took all the time you needed with them.

I just didn't understand the whole "look at the brochure thing". Do you think I needed to drive 800 miles to be told to look at the same thing that's a PDF on the website? I thought they'd be much more engaging and say things like "What are you trying to do?" and then talk about the products they offer than can do that.

Anyone see anything really cool? What caught your attention?

 

[tomence]

I am disappointed too, there was none of the major supply players there, what i saw at the show is what i see at Grimco's open house. This was my first and probably my last time attending ISA. I expected a lot more.
I was surprised by HP, they know how to market a product, lot of people at their booth, waited 20 minutes to talk to somebody.

 

[TheSnowman]

My wife and I were already down there for the week, and we were going to have a "transition day" between hotels on Wednesday and hit the show floor and look at stuff for a few hours that day. Sadly, I didn't realize the floor didn't open till Thursday, and $15 for parking, and 10 minutes later, I found out.

I was able to sneak back for about an hour the next day, but I kinda had the same feelings you did. I was just bombarded with people wanting to scan my ID tag, rather I was interested in what they were selling or not, and my sales rep that I did want to talk to wasn't available. In his defense, we both knew I wasn't going to be buying anything real soon, and he had a big sale he was wrapping up, but was just kind of bummed I didn't have time to go walk the floor with him and have him show me what's changed in the last few years.

The scale of printers that I'm assuming several merchant members here use, was totally awesome, and it's amazing to see up close and shiny new right in front of you, but for me being a one man shop, there wasn't a lot that grabbed my eyes that could help me a lot. I'm sure it's geared towards the bigger shops among us, but yea, I'd have been a bit bummed had I driven there only to do that...even if I was only 100 miles away or so.

I don't have anything to compared it to other than the previous shows I've gone to in Indianapolis. It did seem to blow the size of the Indy show out of the water. I remember they had CNC, Printing, and Apparel all under one roof and it wasn't half the size of this show. Still cool, just not a lot for my tiny shop to benefit from at it. My wife says that I probably feel that way because of how well I've gotten my shop coordinated between all the different subs I use to make things seamless, and there may be some truth to that. I can't justify $60K on a flatbed, when I have MM's that are printing it at just about my cost.

All that being said...this winter SUCKED, and it was great to get down in the warm for a week...so if I have the chance again, I'll probably try to go again next year.

Oh, and if anyone here is working with CET Color, you might tell them they could go for a little more professional way to grab attention to their booth other than a woman dressed to demand your attention. I'm a guy and that stuff catches my attention as much as the next guy, but that's not the place for it. If you have a good enough product, you can have people looking into it if you are just going for barcode scans.

 

[Cross Signs]

I enjoyed the show. It was fun to get away for a couple of days.

 

[Graphic Destruction]

Overall, I thought the show was good. I agree, many of the sales people were on you like hawks wanting to scan that tag regardless of whether you were interested or not.

We found lots of new materials and suppliers. I met a lot of cool guys to talk to/exchange info and tips/tricks.

Golf at Lake Buena Vista was great, ISA did a really good job on that outing. Got to play with Mark Rugen, which was cool. Checked out his presentations on Flexi and even though I've been using it for years, picked up some tricks and other ways to do things within the software. So that was a plus.

Overall, it had a very corporate feel to it, unlike the SGIA which I feel is geared more towards the artist/designer/fabricator than management/sales. The classes seemed all corporate, rather than design oriented unlike the SGIA. On that note, I did attend Dan Antonelli's seminar, which was great. I walked away with a lot from that class.

Getting out of here and into the sun for a few days was good for sure.

 

[CES020]

We attended Dan's class as well. Really great info in that class for sure. It puts things into proper perspective and once you leave there and drive around, you'll find yourself pointing out what's wrong with all the layouts driving around

I remember standing in front of a number of booths wondering "What's that thing do?". We don't do banners, but I still want that Miller banner welding machine

After day 1, I pulled out the map and directory and realized there were a lot of things I wanted to see but didn't even walk past them on Day 1. Such a big show. I'm happy we went. We're not customers of Glantz or Grimco (other than a very rare purchase from Grimco), and we thought both would be interested in gaining our business. All we got was "Can we scan your badge". Not a word about "Do you use us today? What can we help you with? What kind of things do you do?". Nope, just a "can we scan your badge" and then they stared blankly at us like "that's it, move along".

 

[visual800]

Me and Pat went to the Atlanta Show several years ago maybe 04 or 05 hell I forget, I was impressed at the stuff out there but none of it was for me. It was stuff I personally would never own. i even think I filled out wrong contact info as to not be bothered by sales folks...so SCAN AWAY BIOTCHES! LOL

Ill never return to one I actually could care less. I think they were even having a wrap compettiton or something at entrance, YEAH, that hyped me up!

 

[Speedsterbeast]

I was at last years ISA in Vegas and this one in Orlando. I thought it was a good mix of everything. I'm a one man shop as well, so I only expect 10% of the vendors to be in my league. There were certainly a few booths that were lacking interest in helping people. I found a lot of help in the Oracal booth for the second time. Also for the second time couldn't get so much as a hello or anyone interested in helping me in the Mimaki booth. Saw some cool things- Anajet's garment printer, the EZY Taper- which I'm buying, the new 8' ACM cutter by Keencut , and now HP has a 54" Latex which may get me away from Roland when I upgrade this year, and Justin Pate making wrapping look as easy as Mark Knophler makes guitar look easy.
All in all I enjoyed the show.
The four days in cocoa beach surfing didn't hurt either.