Team Sensative at our display at the IFA trade show in Berlin. (L to R – Fredrik Westman, Co-Founder/Owner and Sales & Marketing, Nordics, Mats Pettersson, Co-Owner and CEO, Neal Greenspan, International Sales & Marketing)
It was an interesting visit to Berlin with our partners at Telldus and about 230,000 visitors to the biggest consumer electronics show in Europe, IFA. We’ve now had time to recoup from the long and busy days, but the real fun is only just starting!
We’d like to thank Telldus for sharing their booth with us. Telldus was there launching their own Z-Wave/433mhz smart home system. Their gateway got high marks for it being well designed, easy to use and simple to set up. A big positive was how easy people felt it was to add devices and connect them to each other as well as to the gateway itself. They received a lot of interest from different potential business partners. Click here for a review (in Swedish) of their system.
Strips also didn’t fail to impress those who saw it for the first time, or even the 10th. Connected to both a window and a door, we were able to show people how Strips notifies you when one was open or closed. We also fixed, through the Telldus gateway, lights which would turn on when the window was opened, showing how the interoperability of smart devices can help make one’s life more simple and secure.
We at Sensative realized many things during IFA, not the least of which there simply isn’t anybody who has designed a magnetic sensor like we have. We like to kid in the office that a magnet sensor isn’t a sexy product, like a Tesla electric car. But, on the flip side, we feel, and we say this with humility, that Strips will do to the magnetic sensor industry what Tesla is doing and will do to the automobile industry.
What that is exactly, we have some ideas, but really, only time will tell. The fun part is that when you demonstrate a ground breaking product in front of people and their response is as unanimously positive as the one Strips has received, you can’t help but wonder how much of an impact it will make on its branch. And, we’re only getting started!
We also learned that you can’t simply sit in your booth waiting for people to find you. To find the real opportunities, you need to go out, press the flesh so they say, and show people who may be interested. Nobody knows yet that they need an invisible magnet sensor until you show them, they look at their big plastic block on their demonstration door or window and a look of acknowledgement comes to their face. This, Strips, is what we need and we didn’t even know we needed it.
At a show the size IFA, finding the opportunities required a lot of walking. In fact, one morning, the step counter one of Sensative’s attendees had reached its daily goal of 10,000 steps a few hours after entering the massive exhibition center. This was not uncommon and yet we probably still only ended up seeing half of the show in total.
Strips and Sensative continue to move towards a fall launch in the EU and other markets in early 2016. Shows like IFA are necessary proving grounds at this stage to gauge interest and discover different ways we can bring Strips to market.
We look forward to wowing the crowds by showing our invisible sensor to many more people at many more such shows for many years to come!
