Christine McQuilkin:

Could you introduce yourself, your title, and company?

Georgia Whalen:

Georgia Whalen. I’m the president and founder of Rivergate Marketing. We’re very excited to be here again this year. We came two years ago. We took a little break last year, but we really found a lot of value in the sessions and what we were able to learn when we were here the last time and we’re happy to be here again.

Christine McQuilkin:

What more do you hope to get out of the conference?

Georgia Whalen:

The networking is very important to me. Being able to meet other people in the industry and meet with some potential system integrators that we could be helping with our digital marketing efforts, that’s always a plus as well.

Christine McQuilkin:

What exciting industry trends are you seeing in your industry?

Georgia Whalen:

So it’s interesting, as I look at our clients all the way across the United States in many different industries. Some are very up in sales and then some are rather flat, so it’s different by industry. We just attended the economic forecast from Alan from ITR Economics, and it sounds like the next five years are looking good. So I’m looking forward to the future and seeing all of our SIs very busy with manufacturing and reshoring in the United States.

Christine McQuilkin:

Great. Any other expectations for the future of manufacturing?

Georgia Whalen:

Well, it is an interesting time with the rapid developments going on with AI and the technology, and how quick everything is happening. I know it’s going to look a lot different in five years, so it will be an interesting time to be part of the industry.

Christine McQuilkin:

All right. Well, thank you for being on our podcast.

Georgia Whalen:

Absolutely.

Christine McQuilkin:

Please introduce yourself. Tell me your name, title, and company.

Chris Round:

So Chris Round with ARS Automation, with a primary product that most people recognize is called FlexiBowl. If you were interested, you can find at FlexiBowl.com. It’s F-E-L-X-I-B-O-W-L.com. We’re in obviously the automation industry. Our headquarters is in Arezzo, Italy, which is a beautiful part of Tuscany. And if you ever have a chance, our company would welcome anyone to come in. 

But personally, I’ve been in the industry my whole career. I’m on the membership committee, the A3 as well, so I’m involved with that. I’ve been with Epson. Prior to this I was with a couple conveyor companies and I actually had a global marketing role in Europe for a couple years as well. So I’ve been in this all my career. Thanks for having me.

Christine McQuilkin:

What are the biggest trends or challenges you’re seeing in the industry right now?

Chris Round:

Obviously everyone’s going to say AI because it is just the biggest trend. We’re starting to look at that and use… I shouldn’t say starting. We’ve been using it but for, what I would say because that’s such an easy answer, I would say ease of use technology for a challenge that we’re all seeing. We all do our SWOT analysis. We have to make our technology super easy to use. So that is something that’s really important. So we’re looking at ways to make sure we improve as we do our improvements. We’re doing it to make sure it’s very customer centric, so they identify what they can easily use the technology. 

And I also think what’s really important for us, and I think for everybody in the market is speed to market. One of the things that I tend to talk about in our company is to be Amazon fast and Apple easy. So we use that a lot. And maybe one third thing that comes to mind when I think about this is to make sure that as we’re doing this type of technology, we’re doing automation training is a lot of times missed how important it actually is. So I encourage, if you’re looking at automation, buying automation considering automation, make sure you put a line item in your budget for training costs. It’s very important.

Christine McQuilkin:

Good tip. You mentioned speed to market. How has your approach to marketing and business development evolved in recent years?

Chris Round:

So for marketing, I do several things, and I just wrapped up my business planning for the year referring to marketing. I like to take everyone back to the old marketing 101- 4Ps of marketing: price, product placement and promotion. And looking at each and every one of those and making sure we’re doing a really, really good job with each one. Very customer centric. So we have to think, okay, how does our product look? How is it performing? Everything you can think about about the product itself, and for this maybe predominantly controls, we want to make sure that we have the plugins for the Alan Bradleys, et cetera, et cetera. We want to make sure we have all that. And it’s super easy, which back to our previous point, the placement of it, the promotion of it, the pricing of it all, very important. So I could go down paths here.

One of the things that we are doing that I think is maybe… hey, maybe this tips from Chris or something, whatever, but one of the things that I’m doing is generally a company will send out an e-newsletter, right? And so let’s just say for us, we send them to distributors and then our distributors use that as sales advantages or whatever. 

We also are providing new information about, let’s just say the product or pricing or maybe promotion or whatever. But one of the things that we’re also doing is once we send that e-newsletter out, we’re also then packaging up content and sending it in a separate email for them to then use for their customers. So now we’re trying to market all the way through the distributor to the integrator, all the way to the end user by using that additional content we provide. So that’s kind of a neat idea that we’ve been using lately. 

We do a lot of surveys. I probably do a survey a quarter with my distributors with integrators, but those are some things that we do. 

One other thing that I really like to do that we’ve started to do more of is we like to sell by demos. And a lot of companies do that. So one of the things that we’re doing is we’re packaging up demos for integrators to have, which is usually not normal. You’re going to have a demo that you’ll provide to a distributor, so then they can go and they can sell. So if you give them to your integrator, the integrator oftentimes will put that demo on their floor and they’ll use it for testing. But what happens is it also becomes like a little billboard. So customers will be coming by and a factory automation test, they’ll be coming by for open houses, walkthroughs, customer visits, and they’re going to see your product. It’s better than having it in the back of a car of a distributor, have it at an integrators facility so other customers can walk by and see it. So that’s something that we do as well. I like that idea. We do it often. We give a really special price. So if you’re an integrator out listening and if you like a demo, just let me know.

Christine McQuilkin:

Great advice. So here we are at the A3 Business Forum. Do you have any valuable insights or key takeaways that you’ve gained from this year’s conference?

Chris Round:

So this conference, there’s a couple things. So being on the membership committee, I tend to think about that, but for me, I’ve been here at least, I don’t know, 10, 12, 14 years. The best and most important thing about any conference, and I have to say especially this one, is the networking. Networking here is promoted. We call it a newbie event. So if you haven’t been here before, and I think we had, gosh, I think we had like 150 new people this year. So we actually have an event where you come to it and it’s specifically for you to learn how to navigate the conference. You are basically encouraged to network, and we basically box you in to start to get used to meeting people right away. So you’re meeting two to three, four people, and you have veterans like myself or people on different committees in the room to maybe introduce you. There’s people that will be here, they just don’t know anybody at all, and they could be off in a corner, not very comfortable. We bring ’em in, we make sure they feel comfortable, we provide that. But for the networking and what a great association is for that, that is a big takeaway for me. 

I was thinking about with this podcast and being on the membership committee. I think what would be cool, I think if we figured out a way to work together with the CSIA, I’m not sure, maybe there’s a percent of people that are out there listening that know what the A3 is. It’s the Association for [Advancing] Automation, right? But it was the old RIA, which is Robotics Industry of America. The controls and vision smash together the form of the A3, right? We’re going to add in AI later, but bring that together with the CSIA and all that together for maybe an event or a couple events or we figure out a way to merge some things like that. I think that’d be pretty cool because I think I see controls and obviously mechanical needs to come together at some point.

Christine McQuilkin:

That’d be powerful.

Chris Round:

That’d be very, very good.

Christine McQuilkin:

So how can people reach you?

Chris Round:

ARS Automation is of course our website, and I’m at chris.round@arsautomation.com. I’m also on LinkedIn, so feel free to jump over and message me, and if anyone has any needs, anything or wants to connect, let’s do it. And I wanted to also say thank you very much for having me. This is pretty fun. We’re all here at Orlando having a great week, and this is a very, very cool opportunity for me. So thank you so much.

Christine McQuilkin:

Thank you for joining us.

Christine McQuilkin:

Can you introduce yourself? Give me your name, title, and company.

Phil Brown:

Yes. My name is Phil Brown. I am with OMS Motion. I’m the president, and we make multi-axis motion controls for robotics and automation.

Christine McQuilkin:

What are the biggest trends or challenges you’re seeing in the industry right now?

Phil Brown:

Well, technology shifting, and so your product line continuing needs to shift with that. And so that’s our biggest challenge. And it seems like as we tool for the new technology and start to produce a product, it’s changing again. So we’re always chasing it.

Christine McQuilkin:

Yeah. Are there any technology innovations you’re excited about right now?

Phil Brown:

Yeah. Well, I think there’s a technology out called EtherCAT, which is a technology for communications to individual axes of motion. And we’re headed in that direction right now, and it opens up the door for currently we can coordinate 10 axes of motion, but with the EtherCAT, you can do much more than that.

Christine McQuilkin:

Great. How has your approach to marketing and business development evolved through the years for your own company?

Phil Brown:

Marketing, sales and marketing has always been a big challenge. Trying to find people who understand what we do and who our customers are and how to sell those to those customers, that’s a challenge. I found a lot of people who are technical people who are sales savvy, but the combination, I just struggle with finding that talent.

Christine McQuilkin:

What’s the most valuable insight or takeaway you’ve had from the A3 Business Forum this year?

Phil Brown:

Well, Alan always does a great job on the economy, and it makes you torn. He always has something really positive. And then that doom and gloom has been lingering out there. So I have three adult children who need to buy houses.

Christine McQuilkin:

I was going to ask, are you rushing out to buy them houses this year?

Phil Brown:

No, no. He told me to buy them houses. I went, what they need to buy them houses. And then actually the last speaker said something that kind of rang for me, which was “run your business, which was yesterday’s business and keep it going versus tomorrow’s business.” We were part of a public company for 20 some odd years, and that’s all we were doing is yesterday’s business. And the business kept shrinking and it got to a certain size where I’m at, we can’t do this anymore. So I actually acquired the company from them and got away from them, and now we’re doing our looking for tomorrow’s business. So we’re excited about that.

Christine McQuilkin:

That’s great advice. Anything else you’d like to add?

Phil Brown:

No. I’ve been coming to this show since before the A3 was formed. It was all these different, I was part of the Motion Control Association, and it’s a great venue, and so I enjoy coming and meeting people.

Christine McQuilkin:

Yes, me as well. And how can people connect with you?

Phil Brown:

I’m on LinkedIn and we have a company site there. We also have OMSMotion.com. It’s our website.

Christine McQuilkin:

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Phil Brown:

You bet. My pleasure.

Christine McQuilkin:

Please introduce yourself. Your name, title, and company.

Scott Marsic:

My name’s Scott Marsic. I’m the group product manager of Epson Robots,

Christine McQuilkin:

Epson Robots. Awesome. Thanks for being with us here today.

Scott Marsic:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Christine McQuilkin:

What are the biggest trends or challenges you’re seeing in the industry right now?

Scott Marsic:

So the industry, I think just has, it’s got a ton of great things going on. I mean, I think we’re still coming off kind of this Covid trough, if you will. A lot of companies over the past years have been working off their backlog and end users are kind of conservative with their investment and capital and what they’re going to do moving forward. And so we’re really at this inflection point. And I think 2025 presents a really interesting opportunity for both manufacturers as well as suppliers to really make some cool things happen. Got great technologies coming out with, certainly everyone’s talking about AI and how that integrates in with robotics and machine learning and vision, and people are trying to figure out what tools am I going to use going forward? And so maybe part of the problem is just there’s so much stuff. What do I need to zero in on?

Christine McQuilkin:

You touched on technology, are there certain innovations that you’re more excited about than others?

Scott Marsic:

I think a lot of the things happening around mobility is really cool. Mobility brings in the need for sensors to know where you’re at. Sensors bring in the need for data, and data brings in the need for AI. And so you kind of see this genesis happening for a long time. Folks in this industry really zero in on vision and using that for inspection or whatnot, but now you just have so much data. It really presents an interesting opportunity for companies to expand maybe what they’ve done in the past.

Christine McQuilkin:

I agree. Yes, we’re seeing that across the industry. How has your approach to marketing and business development evolved over recent years?

Scott Marsic:

I think that over the past few years, we’ve had to be more, say maybe proactive. And I don’t want to say that we were ever, not proactive, but maybe more proactive because things have been slow for the industry. Things have kind of been in this quasi, not really sure what we’re doing. And that’s been across all facets of manufacturing in my career. Certainly in the past few years, we’ve spent a lot more time on thought leadership, on reaching out to people where they’re at on verticals and applications. I look at what’s online say on LinkedIn, and it’s just video, video, video, video. People want to see what’s possible and they want to hear more about that than say, speeds and feeds and specs. And that makes it really interesting and compelling for a marketer.

Christine McQuilkin:

What’s the most valuable insight or takeaway you’ve had from the A3 Business Forum this year?

Scott Marsic:

You come here and you meet a lot of people, it’s almost overwhelming. I think there’s what, 700 something people? And if you’re like an introvert, you got to crawl out of your shell and meet people. And so I wouldn’t say I’m the most extroverted guy. I get kind of exhausted. But once you do that, you find you just hear stories and you meet people that have just come from all facets of the industry and life. And I think that is the most valuable thing here.

Certainly the economic insights that we all learned from ITR and others are really fascinating as well as some of the speakers that come in and talk about the latest technologies. AI has really been, I think, one of the lead topics. And not just AI for AI’s sake, but what are people doing with AI and is it worth all the buzz? Is it worth the investment? And a lot of it comes back to just fundamentals. What do you trying to solve? What are you trying to make better? And that’s probably one of the big things people get out of the show is best practices.

Christine McQuilkin:

Yeah, that was great. Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Scott Marsic:

No. This is a phenomenal show, and I really encourage anyone that is listening to think about next year coming here and at minimum making connections, but at best learning some exciting new thoughts and topics and directions that you can take with you to make your business better in the following year.

Christine McQuilkin:

I second that. How can people connect with you?

Scott Marsic:

On LinkedIn? So Scott Marsic, M-A-R-S-I-C. And pretty easy to find there. And be happy to connect with anyone reaching out.

Christine McQuilkin:

Thank you so much.

Scott Marsic:

You’re welcome.