MODEX ‘22 as an SVTer

The week before Modex this year in Atlanta, our VP of Sales, TJ Fanning, said to us in a meeting, “Don’t show up to the building five minutes before you’re supposed to get there... it might take you twenty minutes or so to walk to our booth.” TJ wasn’t lying. I’ve been to several trade shows and conferences but never as an exhibitor on this scale.

As I pulled up in my Uber the first morning, I wasn’t even sure of the correct place to be dropped off. The Georgia World Congress Center event space is massive, 1.5 million square feet someone told me. In the weeks leading up to Modex, along with my normal Sales role, I was also helping build pallets for some of our robots to send from our Innovation Lab in Norfolk down to Atlanta. As we loaded the pallets onto a semi-truck, I realized the event was going to be big. I don’t know what I was imagining, but it wasn’t this — a metropolis of material handling all inside a building that felt bigger than an airport.

Being new to the industry, walking the floor for the first time was overwhelming. As I meandered through a sea of people and bright lights looking for the SVT booth, I passed by huge names that had a massive booth presence like Dematic and Locus. I thought to myself, “Did I just see a booth that had two levels?!” (I did). Automatic box-resizing machines, massive AS/RS’s set up, lounges, swarms of AMRs, yard games, food trucks, one booth even had a “speakeasy” that you had to know someone to get into!

Ok, now that I’ve set the scene a little bit, I’ll explain my reason for doing so. Out of all 1,000 or so exhibitors and around 30,000 attendees, it was hard not to imagine that SVT, a start-up based out of Virginia, might get lost in the mix. Even with our leadership stressing to us that we would be busy throughout the week, I never pictured generating the kind of buzz and interest that we did.

Each morning started with a loud chant like you might hear in a locker room before a basketball game, “...1...2...3... SVT!” Wow, we were loud, the excitement was palpable, and we were all ready to take on a day full of demos. We had six iMacs set up for our team that was giving demos of our product, we had an army of greeters, our VP of Engineering, VP of Product, VP of Deployments, VP of Customer Success, Head of Talent, Coders, Executive Assistants, most of our Sales and Marketing departments, our CEO, COO, and more! All in all, we had about 50 people from our company on site. Our presence was impressive, but the engagement from the attendees was even more so.

Our team experienced virtually zero down time over the course of the event, giving about 250 demos of our product per day. We were showing seamless deployments of different automated technologies — something people were eager to hear more about. 1,000 demonstrations over four days, that’s one demo every 1.6 minutes. We had an internal “stretch” goal for number of demos we’d give over the week. It’s fair to say we blew that number out of the water. If it sounds like I’m beating my chest about our accomplishments, it’s maybe because I am a little bit. I’ve never been a part of anything like this. I’m excited and proud, hence why I’m writing this.

I spoke to people that ranged from VPs of multinational corporations to Operations Managers of mid-size 3PLs. As I provided demonstrations of our platform to these visitors, everyone wanted to be sure that I scanned their badge. A badge scan meant we had their info, so we could follow up with them after the conference. Typically attendees like to hide their badges, so they’re not bogged down with spam emails from exhibitors — but with us they were asking and telling us, “Make sure you get my badge scanned. I need to make sure my team sees this.”

In the past as an exhibitor at different conferences with former companies, we would brainstorm about how we could get more people to our booth. This year, with SVT, we were having conversations about how we could keep people that were waiting in line for a demo engaged while they (happily) waited 5-10 minutes for an available slot. The buzz and excitement surrounding what we were doing was tremendous. I’m not lying when I tell you that I was washing my hands in a remote bathroom at Georgia World Congress Center on the final day when I heard two gentleman walk in and say, “That SVT stuff was unbelievable. We need it, like yesterday.” There were countless stories from people on our team overhearing similar conversations.

Our success at Modex can be attributed to a number of things: leadership, prep and planning, investors, partners, our product, developers — all those things played an important part. But really, the way we came together as a team with an “all-in” mentality, both leading up to the event and during it, was what did it for us. Our “...1...2...3... SVT!” got louder and louder each day. I think that’s because we could feel what was happening. We were shaking the right hands, making the right connections, generating interest with industry juggernauts, and giving powerful demonstrations of how SVT helps solve the integration problems that exist in our industry.

By the end of the week, excitement, confusion, and fatigue all started to blend together. Thursday night turned into Friday morning as the remaining SVTers stuck around to help box up our bots and pack up cars to head out. The familiar sounds of people traversing the floor were swapped for honks and shouts from fork-lifts and their operators as they hauled pallets and tore down booths.

Once we were done, I finally had a minute to breathe. I walked across Centennial Olympic Park to the World of Coca-Cola. I got a few souvenirs for friends and family, a 32 oz. bottled Coke, and dialed up an Uber for the final time. I said bye to the GWCC for a couple of years with a smile on my face, a better understanding of what to expect in 2024, and most importantly: a long list of potential clients to help solve robotic integration issues in the coming months.