We are a Rapid 2021 exhibitor in Chicago and I, for one, am looking forward to reconnecting with industry experts. I’ve been going to additive manufacturing industry events for over 20 years now. There are always elements of excitement. Your company may be launching products. You have meetings lined up with customers, prospects, and partners. As a somewhat social animal, being out and about meeting with people is often the most fun part of what I do for a career. Like all of us, Covid has put an 18-month hold on most of that.
Aside from some cases here and there, I am grateful that my family, friends and work colleagues have been largely healthy through this pandemic. I am also grateful that we have begun to successfully build Boston Micro Fabrication through all of this. We launched globally in early 2020 and we are introducing a new, high-value technology. My experiences would tell me that new customers would be hesitant to invest in something new without physically seeing our systems, touching them, and looking under the hood. This was always previously achieved through visits to trade shows, company offices, partner showrooms, or reference customer sites. Fortunately, the biggest value that BMF brings is in the very high quality of our printed parts. Customers are buying that capability. Our ability to produce benchmarks and samples has been largely unaffected by Covid. We print parts every day and mail them around the world. Customers receive them, measure them, test them and engage. Universally, the response has been fantastic with consistent feedback like “these are the best parts we have ever seen” or “we have been trying to do this for years, and now we can.”
We are shipping systems worldwide to new customers who are seeing their machines live for the first time when they are delivered and installed. Like many others out there, we have adapted to a new reality and have learned to build our company and serve our customers in new ways. We have learned how to thrive despite the restrictions and many of these new ways of doing business will endure, even as Covid wanes.
All that being said, we are thrilled to be a Rapid 2021 exhibitor. It will be great to get back out there live at the conference. We are launching new products next week (check us out at booth E7225). We will be meeting with customers, prospects, and partners. We are a stronger company having managed through the past 18 months. We are exceeding our growth plans drafted two years ago. We often ask ourselves: “imagine where we would be if Covid hadn’t happened.”
Looking forward to catching up at the show!
