Business Climate Redux – Better Now

A few months ago I noted that the business climate according to MVC was picking up.  As it turned out, I was dead wrong.  Our leading indicators were pointing up, but our customers were definitely pointing down.  Most big opportunities were pushed out until next year.  Though very disappointing, we persevered.  We did not cut any staff as we sure that when the economy (MVC’s economy) turns around, we would be well positioned.

Now, gratefully, it seems as though our business climate is pointing up.  For a few weeks we have seen the number of opportunities increase quite a bit.  Our indicators had leveled off and are now pointing up.  And luckily our customers are agreeing with us.  We got two repeat orders last week and we have  just been informed of a very large order with a new customer.  MVC is smiling now.

How did we keep afloat during the real hard times?  First off, we did not panic.  Second, we focused all our efforts on business development, including help from our engineers.  Third, we worked on developing new products (please check out VisionGuard on our website at http://www.machinevc.com/visionguard.html).  And we used some of the down time to improve some of our company processes such as adding a customer support portion to our website.

Now, we are ready to tackle the upswing.  Let’s just hope it stays!

State of the Business – May 2009

There is no denying that it’s been a rocky road for our economy.  While times were at its worst, MVC’s business remained quite strong with a lot of opportunities to bid – and win.  Based on our business we were surprised to hear that Cognex, our biggest vendor and source of many leads, was slowing down considerably.  With that news, we began to brace for the storm.  And then, all of a sudden, it hit as we started to experience the slowdown.  Some of our larger customers began pushing out orders and curtailing capital spending.  We went weeks without a decent lead or winning a project (we did not lose any, we just did not win any).  Luckily we had quite a backlog to sustain us.  As we got close to working down our backlog, we started to see an uptick.  Over the past two weeks the number of leads has increased.  What is encouraging is that the leads are coming from our website, completely unsolicited.  And, we received an order from a customer who had become dormant (they service the automobile industry).  We cannot say that recovery has hit, but for the first time in a few months, we are encouraged.

Just a note: we are not the only vision company seeing this.  I have personally talked with vision vendors, vision integrators, vision distributers and have received very similar reports.

Phoenix Vision Show

Went to the Phoenix Vision Show today and was very dissappointed.  My number one goal was to look for prospective business for MVC.  Nothing happening on this front. Second was to see exciting new products.  I found it very limited.  Lastly, to meet up with certain people in the industry.  Very successful with this.  But is this enough to keep me going when my phone and email work quite well? 

Dissapointment #1: There were few booths with most of the ususal suspects.  When will there be new and exciting products from new and exciting companies?

Dissapointment #2: It was very slow.  In fact it was so slow, it will most likely be my last visit to a vision show.  Over the past few years my team has noticed a drastic decline in attendance at the Vision Show in Boston.  My visit to the Phoenix show confirms that attendance is way off in general.

As a consequence, MVC will focus on industry shows from now on, i.e., PacExpo, Interfex, etc. with one exception – the Robot and Vision show in Chicago.  We are trying to get some inexpensive booth space to demonstrate at least two of our products – CodeSure and VisionGaurd.  Check out our website for more on these products: http://www.machinevc.com/code-sure.html and http://www.machinevc.com/visionguard.html.

Overall, a very dissappointing two hours – How did I survive that long?

MVC Shows CodeSure at Interfex

A special thanks to the Sony Machine Vision folks for inviting MVC to show their CodeSure product at the Interfex show. 

Machine Vision Consulting’s CodeSure™ product — provides automated high speed character verification on manufacturing product codes. CodeSure™ works on codes applied to a product container by an ink-jet printer, a thermal transfer unit, or a hot-stamper. The CodeSure™ product consists of a camera with the appropriate lighting and an enclosure containing vision electronics and a compact PC running the CodeSure™ software. CodeSure™ operator interface is displayed on the PC´s touch screen monitor, and the system status is indicated with a three-color stack-light for remote monitoring. To learn more about CodeSure, visit the MVC website at http://www.machinevc.com/code-sure.html.

For the show, we ported the CodeSure software onto the Sony Smart Camera (Next Generation XCI-SX100/XP SXGA B/W Progressive Scan).  To learn more about the Sony Smart Camera, visit http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-industrialcameras/resource.solutions.bbsccms-assets-mkt-indauto-Solutions-smartcameras.shtml.

Hello world!

Hi everyone, I am finally moving to the 21st century with my own blog.  I’ll be commenting (OK, blogging) about all types of things such as my business, my favorite sport subjects and my activites.

Looking forward to hearing your pithy comments.