News English — event review

ARE WE FINALLY BACK TO NORMAL? The 2022 NRF show was a dud with plenty of exhibitor + visitor cancellations due to Covid restrictions. This year's edition was pretty much back to normal and visitor numbers felt as if they hit pre-pandemic levels. Yours truly in front of the entrance hall at Javits Center (picture from the new wing). Filling up pretty quick down there. The perspective is probably a bit deceptive (or my camera is bad), but there was no shortage of attendees for sure. A LACK OF INNOVATIVE IDEAS/CONCEPTS Our immediate impression of the show was a certain lack of...

#1 ROBOTICS NETWORKING EVENT STIQ Ltd organised the first ever In-Person robotics networking event in London, UK on March 23rd via the "TLA Robotics" working group. This event was hosted by Shoosmiths in their very nice and central London offices, not more than 100metres from St. Pauls Cathedral. About 70 of 100 registered attendees showed up on the night which was an excellent result considering various remaining Covid issues. Unfortunately this meant one of the presenting companies had to pull out (Q-bot). The audience was treated to seven presentations from high quality robotics companies: Botsandus, Ross Robotics, Sky Drones, Opteran, e-Nano,...

The Monday is often considered the business day, when the larger budget buyers come out to play. Most exhibitors appeared sanguine about the level of visitor traffic versus quality as usual. It is not inconceivable that NRF 2022 has taken a hit in visit traffic, many thanks to the pandemic. One of the longest queues at NRF during all our visits have been to Starbucks. Many coffee connoisseurs criticize Starbucks for the apparent lack of coffee in the drinks they serve. However, as the queue is evidence of - these beverages are very popular in the US... but... Starbucks also sell gift...

Day 1 at NRF Big Show kicked off with a keynote featuring Target's CEO Brian Cornell and Matthew Shay, President & CEO National Retail Federation. After the usual smalltalk about how business was over the holiday period, the two men started talking about supply chain problems and how they could be overcome alongside any other headwinds the retail sector is bound to experience in the next few months and years.  The main focus for Brian Cornell was upstream improvements in visibility and improvement of ports in the US. It was a bit disappointing not to hear about onshoring of manufacturing or alternative sourcing strategies...

Recent news about the high prevalence of Covid in New York appears to have influenced a few companies to downsize their presence at NRF. However, the show has not started yet and we will see with our own eyes from tomorrow 10am. Look out for our coverage from the show. The typical last minute frenzy of setting up meetings with exhibitors have been a very civil affair in 2022 with nearly all companies also offering a hybrid approach with post-show Zoom (replace with your choice of video meeting software) meetings.  Interestingly, the 2022 version has attracted many warehouse automation vendors, from AutoStore to Geek+ and...