Pack Expo Las Vegas 2021
“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.” ― Isaac Newton
This was an experiment from the beginning. One that offered many fruits for our labor, but certainly not a harvest that was guaranteed. We would be the only e-commerce experts exhibiting at this event, and it was our hope only that we would be able to stand out amongst the giants and gain some recognition in a huge space such as this, where we knew our products could offer something important to those in attendance.
One thing I’ve come to appreciate about the culture of this company is that experimentation is a successor to many of our ultimate truths. It shapes what we do, sometimes even as we do it. We experiment to seek the future, we experiment to know the best ways to continue helping our clients and we experiment to know the best way forward for ourselves.
The Pack Expo events feature hundreds of manufacturers and distributors, suppliers of packaging equipment, materials, containers and automation technologies, such as robotics, energy efficiency, digital printing, labeling, and much more. To their own definition, “the PACK EXPO name stands for a quality trade show experience and a wide range of processing and packaging innovations for every vertical market.”
It offers attendees a bounty of cutting edge solutions that are built to make their companies succeed with less effort and more efficiency. These are two values that we hold dear at DCKAP. Despite not being the traditional exhibitor at an event like this, we felt our solutions, Cloras and flexiPIM, would offer a similar trajectory of success to the many end users who look for these kinds of grand improvements.
To our leader and founder’s credit, Karthik Chidambaram saw the possibility of this event with little more than a prompt. We quickly took on the task of exhibiting there with full confidence that he saw something important about the experience, and soon saw that vision even more clearly, whether it would be to find a few new clients, to simply learn more about a wide market ripe with the need for technological innovation, or even just for the experience itself.
This had been our mantra from the beginning. We would learn. We would pronounce ourselves with the confidence that our technology was just as impressive as the giants around us, even if not coming in robotic form. No matter the outcome, we were there to experiment and learn, and that we did.
Day One – September 27, 2021
The Las Vegas Convention Center is huge, though navigating it was thankfully rather simple with all the maps and easily identifiable suites and booth numbers. There are three main halls, with the South, Central, and North buildings all adjacent to each other. DCKAP was an exhibitor in the Upper South Hall at booth 8402, in what was designated to be the Reusable Packaging Pavilion.
With our easy-to-assemble screen and projector as our company display (and some experience setting it up previously), after only fifteen minutes or so of setup time, our booth was up and running. We were ready to meet and greet as many people that came by as we could, with all our branded goodies on display. And come by they did. Everyone loved our swag, and we gave away almost half of the rhinos we designated for the event by the end of the first day!
Day Two – September 28, 2021
The second day started out a bit slower than the first, but there were still a lot of people filling in rather early on and going about their routine of exhibiting and visiting booths, and the crowds came by more and more as the morning rolled on.
It was a great thing to have a business card with our company information and a little explanation about our products and what we do. It was very helpful, as some people were not the best contacts for us to speak to directly about what we could offer, but they were still impressed and they wanted something to pass on to others in their company. This was a great lesson learned and implemented. Always be prepared.
Day Three – September 29, 2021
The final day was a lot slower than the previous two, which our friendly neighbors at the booth next to us who had been exhibiting there for years had explained. It was interesting to chat with them and learn about their mission of “rethinking the potential of plastic” with recyclable and compostable packaging materials that reduce plastic waste. We certainly appreciate their mission, as we are a company that cares deeply about our environment and ecosystem.
Most people had seemingly already walked through our event hall by the afternoon, and most may have been in other areas since the event spanned across three buildings. Still, we were able to gain the interest of passerby’s and meet a few more great folks who were intrigued to learn more about our products and ecommerce support. By the end of the day altogether, we had run out of every last thing we brought for our swag: stickers, t-shirts, and our famous plush rhinos. We would call that a great success in branding and marketing!
On top of getting to know the packaging and processing spaces more intimately, we gained the invaluable knowledge of how to best navigate huge events like this, and we look forward to attending more as in-person events continue on. There is an immense satisfaction to being at events like this, to conveying a message you feel strongly about in front of a new audience in a new space and to have their interest shown in return. Our many thanks to the Pack Expo events teams who made this gigantic event run smoothly and allowed us the experience which we will take with us going forward.
If you’re interested in learning more about other events we’ve exhibited at, check out our blog on the recent P21WWUG Connect Event.
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