Comanche Marketing: April 2011

I've been lax about posting while we were in Germany for the Service Nation Alliance's International Leadership Workshop, led by Ron Smith and the ISH Show. I've also be behind after we returned. If you're in the plumbing, heating, and air conditioning industry and have never been to the bi-annual ISH Show in Frankfurt, put it on your bucket list. The show is amazing. It's the most incredible trade show I've ever attended (and that includes the old Comdex Shows for the computer industry). Here's a few pictures...

The hotel downloaded the Service Roundtable logo for the Service Nation Alliance's Leadership Workshop in Frankfurt, Germany. We held the workshop in the mornings and visited the show in the afternoons.

Ron Smith led the Service Nation Alliance Leadership Workshop in Frankfurt, Germany.

One of eleven exhibit halls of Messe Frankfurt, all filed with exhibitors at the ISH Show (many of them multiple level).

One of the courtyards at the ISH Show. This courtyard is surrounded by exhibit halls, all filled.

The building directly ahead looks like a huge basketball arena, but is really just another exhibit hall at the ISH Show.

This is a stop for the shuttle buses, like the one at the left. The buses carry people between the different exhibit hall entrances. There's another courtyard behind the building on the left and another beyond the building directly ahead (the high rise is not part of ISH).

Another one of the exhibit halls.

Farr had a trailer exhibit in one of the courtyards.

Note the piping over the eating area in this exhibitor's booth.

The scale of the show is matched by the scale of the booths. Nearly every one of them had a full bar plus food.

A company promoting private labeling.

At last... we finally found a truly "green" product.

Nearly every booth at the ISH Show contained a full bar. Servers bring prospects wine in the glass (look at the two guys to the left), beer in the glass, drinks in the glass, cappuccino in porcelain cups, and food on porcelain plates so that you're obligated to stay in the booth.

Picnic tables for eating and drinking in a corner of a booth.

Using a computer tablet to control the HVAC system.

Overhead hydronic heating.

Exhibitors spare little expense.

Diffusers over an exhibitor's "lounge" area. Note the full bar in the back.

One of a series of moving walk ways carrying people between exhibit halls.

Waiting for the tram to go to the show. The trams and trains were included with the ISH ticket and worked great. Yet, many of the people staying in the hotel took the bus service, which cost six Euros (about $9) each way and took longer.

QR Codes were all over the ISH Show. This is a huge poster on the side of a building. I doubt many people scanned it, however. The facing corridor had a moving walkway on the far side and most people were on it. The window frame limited the ability of a phone to get a read.

If you didn't know what a QR code was or how to read it, there's a pop up display to explain.

This vendor put QR codes next to all of their products, such as this hydronic radiator.

In the bath section, we saw this handicap toilet. This is a serious product. If my father had one of these, he likely would have lived longer. Because he was worried about falling, didn't think he could reach the help cord, and dropped his phone. He spent the night on the toilet, pushing against the wall, developing sores that got infected, requiring a lengthy rehab that he never really recovered from. When I went to check on him after he had spent the night on the toilet, he head was pressed so hard into the wall that hair was embedded. Plumbing professionals have a moral responsibility to offer products like this to their elderly customers.

One of the many huge and elaborate booths at the show. There were several panels like this. This is only part of this vendor's booth.

Note the stairs. That's part of the vendor booth display, as is the second floor bar directly in front. This vendor built this display specifically for the ISH Show.

In the plumbing side of the show, there's even more of an emphasis on booth design. Again, the picture doesn't do the sale of these booths justice. They're huge.

A television built into a mirror. It's cool, I guess, but pretty useless. If it ever breaks, what do you do? Remove the mirror? Guess so.

Toilet seats of every possible design were on display.

A unique, black graphite bath tub.

This is not some kind of Asian soup spoon, but a huge bathtub with the sides fully covered by a mosaic.

Add on bidets to existing toilets. This is another product plumbers should offer to their customers.

After a while all of the faucets at ISH began to look alike and look fuzzy.

A rain shower. The water falls straight down.

Buderus may have had the biggest booth at ISH. This is only part of it. To give you an idea of the scale, below the blue on white Buderus logo directly ahead is a balcony leading back into the upstairs bar area that's part of the Buderus booth.

There was a wide variety of elaborate displays.

Stylish hydronic radiators on display at the ISH Show. These make heating more than function. They make heating art and architecture.

A lot of furnaces and boilers used different types of pellets as fuel sources. Some of the pellets were made from wood. Some were recycled. Some were biomass.

A chef preparing food in a booth.

The picture doesn't do this fireplace justice. The flame is in a single, thin line with around four inches of gravel on either side. It's really beautiful.

The Europeans have heating in general and fireplaces in specific down pat. The show had an overhead venting system so all of these were fully functional. I could feel the heat from the one on the left as I took the picture.

Another wood boiler. This could heat up an entire, large room. Note how the design allows heat to radiate from all four sides and the top.

The outside of some of the buildings at Messe Frankfurt (or the Frankfurt Trade Fair).

Ben Stark took a picture of David Heimer and me in the Testo booth with an infrared thermographic camera.

Ben Stark and Steve Lauten getting a demonstration of infrared thermographic cameras at the Testo Booth in ISH. When infrared themography first came on the market, the cameras cost $12 to $40 thousand. These ranged from $2 to $7.5 thousand.

These fireplaces draft down so they can be used indoors in a retrofit situation provided there's pier and beam construction or a basement. They are absolutely beautiful products and can work indoors or out.

Cooking in a booth at the show.

A vendor was giving a seminar inside this booth.

I think this was the bar area of one of the Uponor booths. That's right, booths. There were 11 huge exhibit halls with multiple levels in each so some vendors had booths in more than one exhibit hall.