During the IMTS in September we had our first open house event. We were excited to welcome numerous end-users, customers and partners throughout the entire week at our facility in Addison.
Since the last IMTS in 2016, we have been pondering on, as to how we can transmit our image, brand, added value and show what we at WIKUS stands for, even better. The result was the idea to have a open house, and I have to admit that the decision was great! Inviting customers to come and scope out innovative product solutions and our capabilities fi rst-hand, is priceless. Giving the opportunity to discover the possibilities with our band saw blades shall provide in solving or meeting the customers project needs of today, and in the future.
Every visitor had the chance to meet each person of our office team, and interact with them over coffee and snacks. Thereafter, the course of the tour was to follow the fl ow of incoming orders to shipping them out. We commenced at order entry, to inventory, to cutting, to welding and grinding, to inspection, to folding & packaging, and finalized the tour at shipping. At the inspection station we showed attendees the vast capabilities of our latest PARAMASTER App, that recommends products (for good, better and best performance results) and provides recommendations on cutting parameters for most of the sawing equipment in the market (i.e. speeds and feeds), by simply scanning the QR codes. We finalized the visit with meetings in our conference room where we presented WIKUS the global company and focused in on our added value we provide in the US and Mexico.
Customer feedback was extremely positive ranging from “WOW you pay great attention to the quality and process documentation”, “it is so clean” to “very impressive” – that lead our conversations into the direction as to what makes us the market leader. Some conversation had more technical discussions on topics as innovations and product development lifecycle, and others were very project specific. The goal, to give every visitor the chance to have these types of conversation one on one, was achieved.
We were very pleased with our fi rst open house and are certain that we have been able to show all visitors who we are at WIKUS. The saying “seeing is believing” did in fact apply to this event, and the one-on-one exchanges solidified, that our partnership will solve problems with the right strategy and collaboration.
– Georgi Jossifov
