North-West autonomous technology innovators, GroundWOW, have been gearing up for success aided by the gradual opening-up of sport around the globe.
Exhibitions and conferences will play a big part in their year-end activity as part of further revealing their technology to the world of sport. This includes a return to Saltex, the very place their world first print capability was shown publicly for the first time in October 2019. “It’s all part of what we consider the missionary work – taking a new technology to an expectant market and walking through how it works in such a breadth of use-cases” commented Chief Commercial Officer, David Pritchard.
“There has definitely been a discernible change over the past three or four months. We developed so much through the pandemic itself and since then, it feels like target clients have really switched on to getting back to their business. We have been super busy with product demonstrations at our HQ near Manchester and we expect a busy time at Saltex as the world finally imagines a return to normal” continued Pritchard.
“At our HQ, the real magic moment at a product demo is when a target customer is able to view their logo being printed live from the viewing platform directly above our indoor test track. We are excited to replicate this experience at the live demo area in the Saltex Eco Village. For lots of customers, seeing a live print is when the penny really drops so we are excited to see people’s live reactions”.
The GroundWOW Commercial Chief continued: “We will be demonstrating our autonomous SFX Pro system which creates high resolution logos and imagery in extraordinary detail. It is an intuitive system that gives stadium owner-operators the keys to unlock the significant value of their own real estate. Pitch perimeter activation has become hugely popular in football for example, and we expect our tech to find a home there as well as in many other sports where pitch activation is already commonplace”.
“We are hoping too to meet some of our friends and contacts from overseas at Saltex. Our travel abroad has been seriously hindered by the pandemic and so to meet again at the event will be a real thrill as well as the prospect of imminent actual travel to set up operations in the Middle East, South Africa, the U.S, Australia and New Zealand in the months ahead”.
Technology advances quickly and standing still isn’t even on the agenda when it comes to the Manchester firm’s purpose-built premises as the expansion of their enterprise continues. “We knew when we moved to our current address that we would outgrow it quite quickly and that is exactly how things have played out. The team has grown enormously. If we look back to Saltex 2019, there were probably eight or ten of us, but we are already approaching thirty employees with a plan to double that inside the next twelve months. We design and develop here, we manufacture here, we test and demonstrate here, all of our future pipeline comes from here…and that all brings with it a requirement for more space. A brilliantly busy period in front of us and Saltex is a big part of that!”.