GSE Expo helps match needs with solutions.

Everyone has business challenges.  They walk around with them on their shoulders but often conceal them from others, until someone shows an interest.

That, friends, is the essence of a trade show.

At our booth at the GSE Expo in Las Vegas, we spent 3 days opening conversations and came home with a list of folks we can potentially provide business solutions.  Now, our effort requires initiating deeper lines of communications, working through timing and budgets, establishing greater definition on projects, and involving others.

There’s a lot of work to be done but we left Las Vegas feeling good about raising our company profile, establishing new business contacts, and showing visitors what SAS offers.

The amazing thing about a trade show, particularly one for the aircraft industry, is the global nature of the audience.  Aircraft maintenance stands are as needed in Abu Dhabi as they are in Atlanta.   It also helps that Boeing and Airbus are an international language because everyone worldwide flies their aircraft.  Your visitor may hail from Israel or Japan but you both know what a B787 or A350 needs.

That’s not to forget the U.S. is still the center of aviation and our conversations spanned from 100 miles upriver in Hebron, KY to San Diego, Seattle, San Antonio, Minneapolis, Miami, Baton Rouge, Boca Raton, and smaller places like Ludington, MI, Seymour, MO and across the northern line in Montreal.  Go to an aircraft trade show and go everywhere.

We cannot discount the presence of our defense partners either.  We enjoyed meeting a large contingent from Robins AFB in GA and others.  While winning defense contracts is a bid process, those who purchase have still got to get out and “kick the tires” so to speak.  We enjoy talking with them and are always wowed by the competence and class they demonstrate.

A strong element of any presentation, or exhibition of your product, is whether your customers speak well about it.  We were delighted to have Antonello Davi, GSE Sr. Specialist, of American Airlines join us in the booth on Wednesday to talk about our Wi-Fi Access Stand.  American was an instrumental partner in its development and has installed several stands already.   Antonello told others that our stand has met and even exceeded American’s expectations.   We appreciate those words and value the relationship even more.

For our first major show, the GSE Expo was a success for SAS.  We’re still a new company to the greater aviation industry and we’re learning.  We’re meeting potential customers; discussing potential new business alliances; and discovering processes and technologies that are unfolding.

Walking the show opened our minds to possibilities, things you haven’t seen before, new approaches, fresh conversations, products we use.   That sponge time is icing on the cake for four days in Las Vegas, never needing to see a roulette wheel.