In January, Suzannah Hallam - Associate Product Manager Mira Marketing, had the exciting opportunity to travel to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, USA to learn more about the latest innovations in the consumer sector and to visit with associates from our parent company Kohler Co. at the Kohler Konnect exhibition stand.
After a long flight and a late night, I spent two days walking the show to see the latest products, innovations and breakthrough technology from manufacturers and service providers across the wide consumer electronics sector.
In the first instance, the scale of the show was slightly overwhelming. With over 200,000 visitors across the week, it was a far bigger show than any I’d been to before, and I quickly realised I would not see everything in the two days!
I made my way to the Smart Home area first to see new products and developments in home security, monitoring and automation. There seemed to be a big push on water security products from a variety of manufacturers, the first key learning to report back to our business. I also spent some time on the Kohler Konnect stand seeing the launch of the Kohler Konnect product suite, including the Alexa activated Verdera mirror. The stand was packed with visitors and looked fabulous!
After the show had closed for the day I had chance to catch up with a few Kohler colleagues over dinner, it was so impressive to hear about everything involved behind the scenes to deliver such a polished and impressive CES debut.
The second day was spent exploring outside of the bathroom sector, looking round halls showcasing cars, TVs, drones and of course many, many robots! Memorable highlights included autonomous luggage following visitors round the show, the walkthrough canyon created by LG to showcase their newest roll-able curved TV, a (really good) table tennis playing robot, and learning about how 5G technology will facilitate further smart home and smart city development.
By the end of the second day I felt exhausted – according to my Apple Watch I’d walked over 40km around the exhibition halls. The show was a true showcase of what technology can do – some useful things, some less so – and from manufacturers you’d expect but some really exciting start-up companies too. The biggest learning for me was the pace of change, the products shown and launched at CES 2018 seemed to be a huge step forward from anything I’d seen before, and it will be interesting to see if this pace continues into 2019.
