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[00:00:51] Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name’s Brian Searl and my fancy little corner, terrible background. Wish I was Arvik with all these people who we have on the show here, but just travel wouldn’t let me get down there today. So I’ve got to at least step up my background and do something virtual next week.

[00:01:06] But in the meantime, welcome to another episode, super excited to have a bunch of guests here who are live in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we’ve got Mr. Joe . Who’s going to take us on a little bit of a tour of the expo hall when it gets set up and all that kind of stuff. Now we’ve got Heather Blankenship who having a little bit of connection issues, but I feel like it’s normal during all conventions ever that they don’t provide enough wifi for us to do what we really want to do in 2021.

[00:01:29] And then we’ve got Mr. Alex Goldman here from ideal software. He’s going to explain a little bit about what his company does talk about is looking forward to the vendor expo and things like that, as well as Mr. Roy Hamill wits. Is that pronounce that right, Roy? Yes. Yes. Perfect. All right. So I’m Skyhawk monitoring profit products.

[00:01:44] He’s going to do this again. We’ve got Cara who, I don’t even know why care is here. She’s in Canada. Like we have one. Yeah, probably better than me. Like we only need one person in Canada so I can leave the show. If you guys feel that would be better. And then we’ve got Angela Hilton here, obviously from Modern Campground and Insider Perks, going to take some charts here and join us on the pod podcast to help us out guests and things like that.

[00:02:06] So welcome, Angela. It looks like maybe we’ve got Heather back, but we’ll see. All so what do we want to start? Like it’s super excited. So HDE 20, 21. I wanna know how it’s gone so far from anybody who’s been in events and things, how it’s going and what’s happening over the next couple of days.

[00:02:22] Just quick break down. Yeah. So I can give you my experience so far. We are signed up as one of the hosted buyers. We got in on Sunday and had a meeting that night with a potential client. And then yesterday I had meetings, I had five meetings back to back with different campgrounds that are looking, just looking to to purchase things.

[00:02:40] The hosted buyer program allows them to come in for free. But they have to have sit-down meetings with certain amount of vendors. And those went really well. So they have a really cool little VIP area for them. And so last night they had orange germs and free drinks, and you’ve got to sit down and have meetings with your potential clients.

[00:02:57] And all of my meetings went really well. They went really well. Actually I, Hey, I can actually show you the area over here. Look at this VIP treatment. I don’t even know. I love the setup of of the hosted buyer meetings. That sounds great. I love the personal touches of, making people feel comfortable instead of just, yeah.

[00:03:17] Yeah. It’s been pretty great. So what they did was, so they have this whole area, this area off and over again, they had an indoor Orndorff station and over there they had drinks and then some people can go into the room as well. And so there was probably about 50 people having meetings last night.

[00:03:33] And it’s basically two on two meetings to find 25. Twenty-five to 30 meetings going on at all times. And it went really well. I’ve written only when we negative and all was that it was sometimes hard to find the person that you’re supposed to meet with because you don’t know what they look like.

[00:03:46] Sure. Yeah. Wow. No, I love that idea. I think it’s so great to get more folks directly. Face-to-face connected with suppliers and vendors. That’s so awesome. Especially after this long year of like disconnected or virtual connection, that one-on-one really personal stuff. Obviously. It sounds like there’s lots of appetite for that.

[00:04:10] Yep. Yeah. Hosted buyer went really well for us, like virtually last year. And again, some of, some of you don’t have stuck here in Canada, work, permit issues, those kinds of things. That’s the only reason I couldn’t be down there. Are you guys looking forward to coming back next year? But yeah, that sounds like a really nice setup.

[00:04:25] It sounds like it’s really well thought out and planned and yeah. Or Roy or Alex, are you guys participating in host Spire at all or? No, I guess she just came down last night and we’re just doing the exhibitions. So unfortunately, Amy, I just got here this morning. Now you guys know for next year.

[00:04:40] Exactly. I’ve already written it down and I’m excited to take part next year. Yeah. We had, like Brian said, we had some really good conversations last year. We weren’t exactly sure how it was going to go. It was the first time that we’d done anything like that. And we actually had some more meaningful conversations, even though we were virtual, we had more meaningful conversations cause they were people that were actually interested.

[00:05:02] I think we got paired maybe with a couple of people that were like, we have no idea who you are. You don’t need anything that you hoped for. But for the most part, it was nice to actually have conversations with people that were looking to purchase services that were actually interested in the services that we offer.

[00:05:17] And from that aspect, we had better conversations there than we’ve had in the booth at assumptions. Yeah. Yeah. And this year so we didn’t last year also when it was virtual this year has actually even been better. Because the last in the clients the gas attendees, they weren’t really able to go and pick out who they were meeting with.

[00:05:37] And this year they had a whole platform where they can pick their meetings. And so it was definitely a little more, they got exactly what they were looking for as opposed to a random. So I would say our meetings were more meaningful this year than they were last year, but in it’s I think some of it last year too, had to do with people registering pretty last minute as well.

[00:05:57] And so people wanting to register as the hosted as a hosted buyer at some point it was a matter of, okay, you’re required to attend this many meetings and now we just need to pair you with people that still have available slots. So it sounds like they’ve worked some of those kinks out though.

[00:06:10] So that’s great to hear. Yeah, it was interesting to participate as a, as a. I got done with a ton of different vendors. It’s a really great option that they’ve done over the last couple of years. I agree with Joe, we were running around going who are my people and who are we supposed to be meeting?

[00:06:26] So Arvik made signs that they hand wrote that looked like you might be meeting somebody at an airport. So we could also as their last minute solution. But it was really great to have that extra time to chat with vendors instead of them having 30 other people stopping at their booth that they’re trying to focus at time.

[00:06:42] It’ll be interesting to see how many purchases in different things that people make with that different type of thing. Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see too, with people that are participating as a hosted buyer, if they’re being matched with the people and services that they’re interested in, it will be interesting to see what numbers the expo actually has versus registered people versus actual attendees, simply because some people they’re coming because they want to only talk to these types of service providers.

[00:07:10] And if they’ve already done that, it’ll be interesting to see what the expo actually looks like once it’s live too. Yeah, I agree. I’d be interested to hear about all of those stats and how those things impact, but, I think looking at it as a Kemper owner, I imagine. Maybe I’m not representative of the sample, but I am I feel like more than one kind of in-person connection would, is typically valuable and necessary for me to make a purchase commitment.

[00:07:36] So that first meeting being really personal and one-on-one and connected, and then being able to maybe stop at a booth again later and follow up, is, would be really valuable to me. Great. I liked that they did the hosted buyer meetings. I’m Joe. I should ask Joe, are they doing hosted buyer meetings all throughout the week?

[00:07:58] I don’t know. I had I had four set up yesterday and I actually have one set up during the trade show during the expo. So I don’t know how that’s going to go. I will have someone else with me, so I have someone to man the booth, but they’re actually the hosted buyers I actually going to be coming to my booth.

[00:08:12] Your day and they’re going all the way through Thursday afternoon. So they are set up for the whole, it’s interesting that they have hosted by our meetings happening during the live expo, especially for people that are the only person in their booth and being able to give attention to the people that are still stopping by.

[00:08:30] I do think it’s great though, that they started them so early in the week before the show, like Kara said, people that can make that connection and then they have a little bit of time to think about it, but still make the purchase at the show. A lot of times I know vendors will offer specials only during the show.

[00:08:44] So it’s nice that it gives them a preview, a little bit of what they’re going to see, or what’s going to be offered later in the week.

[00:08:55] Yeah, I think I think there’s probably a balance if you have more than one person at your booth, but it will be interesting because as a hosted buyer, you probably expect that face-to-face time. And then being in the middle of the trade show, competing with other people. I don’t, obviously you can balance that.

[00:09:05] Joe, with rose, but it’ll be interesting to see how that works. And then again, like you guys were commenting it’ll be really interesting to see if you’re coming and you’ve talked to these vendors, do you still go to the expo? Because we traditionally have seen it, not necessarily Arvik, but most conferences overall, like the show heart during maybe the first day of the first session and then it dies off.

[00:09:24] So does that hold true or do less people browse the expo because they’ve already talked to people. They want to be interested in how many meetings, how many hosted buyer meetings doesn’t attend the sign up for. They’re supposed to sign up for a minute of six. And the interesting thing is they had so many sign up.

[00:09:40] They had to go back and open additional times so that we could all sign up for times. And with some of the things you’re saying y’all are mostly on the vendor side and maybe on the buyer side, way more people than sick that I have on, or that the XO is over. So I’m super excited for the exit internet fix and be able to go meet with the rest of those vendors.

[00:10:02] And also because I’m in the middle of this purchase on a new property, my current focus is the alternative accommodation. So even though I got some basic information from those meetings last night, I’m excited to come in and now see the problem. They’re offering a day

[00:10:20] taking that two step process because I got to go up. To come in and make my buying decision today. That’s an excellent point. Yeah. Especially with the clamping accommodations, because you don’t have that 10th kind of soda wagon, that thing to walk through, like you would during the expo. So yeah, that’s a really good point.

[00:10:38] Heather, you have somebody with you. Do we want to, I don’t want to take up his time and make him stand there and figure out who he is and then we can let him go. He’s got other stuff to do. Absolutely. So it’s been an interesting setting through all of the classes this week. The big thing is I would say at least 50% of the people I’m meeting are all developing parks.

[00:10:57] So when Brian, you said go find us a vendor that seems like somebody we’d want to talk to you with that. Okay. Let’s find somebody who can

[00:11:09] Michael yesterday. They offer a product that has to do with the pedestals when they’re developing. And it allows us to arch back the electricity, which is a huge benefit for parks that have seasonal guests or long-term guests, because that is something that they should be doing. And I know I was talking with Peter, who’s the chairman of the board yesterday, and they’re currently manually reading 280 meters a month.

[00:11:33] So for him there at Karen’s been there, it’s a really good option. So I’ll let you guys talk to him about that. Yeah.

[00:11:45] We can hear you. There’s a little bit of an echo with Heather’s Heather. I’m going to be temporarily.

[00:11:56] Yeah, I basically got it. She just stepped away. All right. For having me on here. Yeah, just to add a little bit more info. So this I’m utilizing. And I’m actually here at this, that it was like a last minute participation our friends over at electrical work, they do out a dozen RV parks a year in terms of a full turnkey development.

[00:12:19] And we partner with them on board and offer a solution that it does exactly what Heather says which is basically offer a park manager, the opportunity to monitor a meter, all of their utility concern from all of these sites all at once, all from a remote location. So it basically takes all that information that you would typically get from walking up to any pedestal.

[00:12:43] You can see the utility consumption, whether electrical water, and then it brings that online. And it give you a little bit more than just having, the handwritten notes that you look at for for them assumptions over the time. So our service. Aim to change the whole interaction and bring some more data for you to work with.

[00:13:00] And then change that in action as a park manager or a product itself integrates well with all of the park management software. So it extends that whole interaction to bring more smarts into the industry. We talk all the time about automation on this show. Yeah I highly recommend those for these, for the parts that are charging back for power.

[00:13:20] That’s a big job when you’re doing that stuff manually. It’s great to see products like this coming on online and showing up at the expo. It’s awesome. I’m sorry. Go ahead. I was going, gonna say I was in one of the sessions today and one of the during the session the gentlemen who was speaking said that he actually meters over.

[00:13:40] Even. And so what happens is, as soon as they check in the meter is red and as soon as they check out, the meter is read and then they’re built. And so it’s not even for long-term stays on. Now, some people are considering doing this for, short term and overnight stays, one of the big topic around that was one of the sessions was on electric vehicles.

[00:13:57] And so people are asking, okay, when somebody comes in and they plug in their electric vehicle, in addition to that RV, then what’s the difference in what it’s costing me. So that sparked the conversation with Michael to think, okay, is that something that overnight parks need? I don’t know. And it’s definitely something that all the technologies and things like that.

[00:14:16] Go ahead, Michael, please. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So spend a little bit on that. It really comes down to the kind of the business model that pertains to the particularly the particular campground and how you’re building that customer on the utility. For the example that was shown earlier today where the electric vehicle is showing up and, it’s going to take a space the same along with a toll ball or something else.

[00:14:41] It really did goes back to your utility model. If you’re charging me, you’re passing along that cost to your, a camper, then it’s, you’re gonna measure it all the same and you’re going to provide that same kind of service to them. So it’s, it’s no different for day to day where really those changes for the overnight or the one-liners or, guess the short-term campers that are onsite.

[00:15:02] Those are the ones that really goes back to how you operate and how you choose to bill for these other, beyond that end. But all our service does is it gives the manager the option to see exactly what that is from anywhere. And then and consolidate a lot of the labor that goes around maintaining and operating the utility and billing aspect of.

[00:15:25] Yeah, it’s really amazing to attend these shows and see all of these new vendors who some are repeat guests, or, they’d been there years and years in a row, and some are brand new and some we haven’t heard of, and as the technology has changed and new services and more people develop, just see all those kinds of things that pop up.

[00:15:39] And I know we’ve got two on here that we’re gonna talk to in a second, Alex and Roy are going to tell us about some of their unique products. They’re excited that they just got in today, I think, or they’re going to attend the expo too. But I do want to get to Heather real quick and touch because they don’t want to cover all on vendors.

[00:15:51] Heather tell us what’s been the campground owners side of the perspective, how the sessions is going, the meals, the networking, those kinds of things. We were talking about this earlier. The food is with vacantly better than usual. So they definitely heard us talking about how we would have some inevitable meals at these conferences which that’s whatever, no know, how’s the food. But from a campground owners perspective they did a really good job this year. Picking the agenda. The classes have had a wide range of things that. That were interesting to everybody and good topics that my team is dividing and conquering. But like I said before, about 50% of the people here are either interested in developing or they bought their land and in getting ready to start developing our attendance is through the roof.

[00:16:34] We have doubled what we saw at the last conference. It’s eight, we were at eight 60, the last count I heard in my board meeting on Monday. So that is significantly increased in the last time that we were in Raleigh, same with the vendors. The vendor floor is full. You can see me walking past one of the park models here.

[00:16:50] But overall it seems to be going really well so far the class that was overflowing out the room this morning was again, one on development. Awesome. Really speaks to how the industry and then solve the overflowing class problem. Heather, do we had that at your session like two years ago? No, I know, worse problem.

[00:17:10] That’s true. Oh, Joe’s got a, Joe’s got a little picture here of the expo hall. Nice vantage point. Like we should, yeah. Joe, can you bring a drone next year? Can we fly that inside of the arm?

[00:17:25] You have a great view, but you’re muted. I said, I just keep one in my backpack. I go, I’ll just bring it out real quick. Perfect. Thank you. You’re so versatile. You can probably control it from your app too, which we’ll definitely have to talk to you about your experience later. Yeah, so the sessions are going well, what other classes have they had other?

[00:17:45] I was in marketing. That was interesting. They were talking about a different type of marketing than we, we usually hear about related to. How the customer themselves are contributing to their SEO, not just the marketing company that you’re using. That was pretty interesting. Works with local small businesses.

[00:18:06] There’s been classes on financing. There was somebody here talking about the SBA and SDA are USDA loans. Obviously they’ve got their normal software sessions going on a typical stuff. You see the speakers to seem to be a little more. And did you Heather, did you attend the camp meeting?

[00:18:22] Has that happened yet? All of the camp meeting have conflicted with my board meetings and my wife, he this and that. I’ve got too many roles for that. The everything, yeah. It’s a, it’s definitely a jam packed schedule. So Joe Joe’s running around the expo hall. Joe, if you find another vendor or somebody interesting for us to talk to you, let us know, but let’s let’s move to Alex real quick.

[00:18:43] And Alex ideal software you knew at this is a first article. First conference. Yes. So we have a customer at Beth Ryan that has suggested we come and visit and check it out. Our software is geared and really rooted more in the family entertainment center industry. But as we’ve grown over the past close to 40 years now with the capabilities growing and growing we find different industries from time to time that we ended up being a good fit for.

[00:19:10] And this seems like a one that’s really starting to move into that direction. Yeah. Awesome. So what does ideal software do? Give us your elevator pitch as you will. And Heather, if you want to find somebody else to interview, you can to please feel free. Like we’re structured here. We’ll just randomly pull people aside.

[00:19:27] Go ahead. Yep. So we do point of sale online booking ticketing, cashless for arcades and a little bit of everything around that and what that allows us to do also that cashless fit, maybe reserved for an arcade also would give you the ability to. I have a cashless card or wristband to be able to run around the property, leave your wallet in your RV and just be able to run around, especially works well with people who have waterparks, where you’re definitely not carrying a lot of valuables with you while you’re going down slides.

[00:19:56] So having the ability to charge up a card or a risk of. We see a lot more upfront spending, especially if you can give incentives after you’ve figured out what the normal spend is, give those incentives to get those higher level of spins. And then of course, that convenience of having it on a wristband and just being able to scan it wherever it feels like that money’s already spent.

[00:20:13] So people are feel better about using that a little more freely. So that’s definitely a nice side of it. And we also give you tools for mobile point of sale capabilities to run around and take orders. We’ve also released an app that gives you the ability to do food and beverage ordering, and also manage your wristband.

[00:20:31] So you can manage your kid’s wrist bands. If they’re at the arcade and you need 10 more minutes as parents alone then you can top off their wristbands to be able to be used in the arcade. And then we also do have full food and beverage and bars. So we’ve taught some people with swim up bars and being able to make sure those wristbands work there.

[00:20:46] And of course, water parks. I mentioned that a minute ago, we do membership capability, season pass admission capacity management. If you have a smaller park, you need to manage that capacity. So we try and do a lot of different things. We don’t, we’re not gonna do your reservations. So you definitely would want to keep your reservation, but we would do pretty much everything else.

[00:21:06] Yeah. I really don’t see a downside to having a wristband. Cause like you said, number one, the mindset changes, instead of pulling out my wallet or my credit card or cash, I’ve got a wristband. And so you’re still maybe a little bit conscious of what you’re spending, but like you said, there’s a prepay feel to it.

[00:21:19] And there’s also a. Not that same hesitation when you’re trying to pull out cash and it’s right in front of you that you’re spending more money than you should. But also like from an everything else standpoint, like it’s convenient. Like you’re talking about swimming bars and arcades and mini golf.

[00:21:32] Like you could have little scanning stations at the beginning of that. So it impacts your staff. And then from a children perspective, it’s very easy to steal from your parents’ kids. So you don’t have to pull out the wallet, get into mom’s purse is probably just sitting right on their nightstand. So just sneak in at night, get some candy because it’s, I don’t see a losing thing here.

[00:21:51] Everyone’s worried about. Sounds like a terrible idea, but I actually crossed into the bad advice section of the episode this week. I think I, it’s a really interesting piece of software and I can absolutely see how it translates well into this industry because excuse me, so many people do have all of these different like channels of income or revenue streams throughout their park.

[00:22:18] But it’s also a great way to incentivize people to book too, because I feel like you said, there’s that prepay aspect. So you can offer a two night cabins day in a slower part of your season or an RV site. And you can say it comes with X amount of dollars on the wristband and when you’re factoring it altogether, like it’s not even an expense for you that you’re giving them this credit that they get to spend.

[00:22:42] So I, you could really go loose with it. Exactly. Yeah. And Brian, something that you’re mentioning there, some people like the prepay aspect, other people say Hey, I’d like to give them an unlimited, let’s just attach a credit card to this and be able to spend that wherever.

[00:22:56] Now we do recommend that you don’t give your kids the credit card link. So we we do get that to the adults though and say, Hey, if you want to just leave it all, if you don’t want to think about that right now, you can use this wristband to to be able to top off your kid’s card and it’ll charge your credit card at that time.

[00:23:10] But we usually reserve that for the families, but yeah, the name of the game is convenience here too. And that’s one thing is, know, you look at it, it’s great for the campground because now they’re able to initiate more of these sales, where it wouldn’t happen originally. But now for the guests, between again, leaving your wallet at home, or even the convenience of I’m sitting at, campfire site three, and I need more wood and we need around a drinks and something else, having that ability to.

[00:23:36] I put that order in from a mobile device and then have just a fulfillment center, some kid on a golf cart, bringing stuff. Think about the additional sales there. Again, huge convenience for the customers. I know glamping is getting to be a definitely a big thing. And so this plays right into that.

[00:23:51] But also just, customer service side and the upside of the sales this year, Alex I’m not a campground under, and you should never listen to anything I say, but what about a dog color version where they could scan and go on the attractions on the dog park? Like you can just put it on your dog’s collar and he could just, that’s an incentive, like incidental income.

[00:24:09] I feel like that would work. Yeah. Carrie, you have a dog. Like we can just put it on his collar and then if he wants to go up the slide here, there’s a little scanny thing where he pays a dollar and the campground makes more revenue. I don’t think, I think that’s one barrier. I’m going to take off

[00:24:31] my dog. Yeah, my dog. Can’t go on a slide. Let’s talk about your dog. I found a vendor booth that has camper, dog treats and sell it as I

[00:24:45] here’s my dogs right here. Like you can see my ears. She doesn’t leave in my lap. So she came up to Canada. It’s playing right now. Yeah. Yeah. We can get Riley a caller and charge her, have her charge you a dollar per experience. For your heart’s content. I have a question for Alex real quick for me.

[00:25:11] I have a question for Alex real quick. I know obviously you guys are not a reservation system, but do you guys tie into, do you have any API available that tie into any of the other reservation systems so that people can in a roundabout way track the entire spend of a single customer? Yeah.

[00:25:28] Yeah. Like I said, we are new to the campground industry, but we are in talks with one or two companies right now looking to expand on that hopefully soon. But yeah, we’re, that’s definitely in the plans. Yeah. I could see that being a huge benefit, being able to, yeah. Really track and hone in, because right now you can only track what a guest is spending.

[00:25:47] If you are using your reservation system to sell certain things. But the reservation systems aren’t expansive enough necessarily to be I, to my knowledge, anyway, I’m not a campground owner, but to my knowledge, not expansive enough to be a full on POS system of every single thing that you sell in your store.

[00:26:04] I don’t think anyway. And so I could see that being a benefit to be able to say, wow, they use the wristband and this is everything that they spent while they were in my park on top of the reservation fee and being able to really see the value of that customer. For sure. Yep. That’s definitely the beauty of the cashless system.

[00:26:20] We, when they originally get that wristband, they completely fill out all their information, set up a customer profile. And so just like you’re saying, I have full view of spin that you’re able to see there. And you’re also able to do some cool loyalty things on top of that, like saying, Hey, if you spend X amount, then you start getting into a VIP club where you get certain benefits.

[00:26:40] Or even if you come and visit us a certain amount of times in a year, then, we can start to put a free ice cream coat on there or whatever you might want to come up with. There’s a lot of creative things that you can do to be proactive in getting people to come back or just spend more money while they’re.

[00:26:56] Yeah. Even if you can’t integrate with a reservation systems, I think I would like to know whether you, as a company would ever develop just an API that other developers could let to jump onto. And I know Joe’s got somebody that we want to talk to here in a second, but Joe actually helped us build an integration where camp spot specifically were tracking revenue for some of our larger clients where it feeds in from camp spots online booking into a CRM.

[00:27:17] So they can track that next to the person’s name. And if we could add in ciliary revenue into that’d be super cool because then you could target based on what they purchased and offer them coupons and all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we’re built on a lot of API APIs. We’re always open to collaboration and that’s one, one of the special things about this company is they’re pretty quick to dig in and see what it takes, what it would take to get that done.

[00:27:38] Yeah, that’s. Yeah, let’s look up after the show or something. Angela can give her a contact information. We can at least do a cause. It’s a story worth telling about your product on Modern Campground. Joe, I don’t want to make you wait any more. You look like you’ve got somebody there. Yeah. So Heather earlier to drop off here and when she mentioned that one of the things that she was excited to do and why even after the hosted buyer program, she would come to the expo is to look at more interesting glamping accommodations.

[00:28:02] And so I’m right here.

[00:28:04] I’m going to actually, I’ll let you planes craft a wagon. I’m. I’m going to let Dennis go ahead and show you around and we’re here at the artist. How are you doing great. How are you? Yeah, just great. So I just do this, and show you the wagon. Let me walk inside and show this to you.

[00:28:31] Yeah, it’s still beautiful. It’s one of my favorite, one of my favorite things about any trade show is being able to actually see all of the glamping, accommodations and cabinets, all of that in person. We see so much of it through pictures with our clients, but they’re so beautiful. It’s so much more room than what you would expect is to once you’re there.

[00:28:52] I was thinking it’s so much bigger on the inside than I thought it would be right there. If you go to our website@plainscraft.net, I’m trying to show you the bathroom here.

[00:29:08] Here’s the deal, the shower. Just tilt it down a little bit. We can see the bottom of the shower. We can see the top of it right now. There you go. Yup.

[00:29:22] So we sell wagons with bathrooms and without we, we start with a simple bath, a simple wagon, and then add the amenities, bathrooms, air conditioning. There’s Joe, we’re having a good time at the show.

[00:29:41] Wow. Yeah, that’s a lot of head room. Yeah. We’re we’re growing our business and we’re increasing production right now. And so anyway, just a lot of fun

[00:30:02] when I was playing Oregon trail, when I was a child, that is exactly how it works

[00:30:09] in our labs at school. We’re dating ourselves here.

[00:30:14] And this is just one example of the layouts that we do. We do everything for. We can put six bunk beds in one of these would that don’t have a bathroom, but all kinds of different configurations of furniture and everything. And they’re just good money makers, a good return because people will pay a little extra to stay in something really unique.

[00:30:36] And the bathrooms have been very popular

[00:30:42] about one o’clock in the morning, the bathroom is even more popular.

[00:30:51] Oh, I remember doing that, Dennis. Like when I was younger and would tent camp and more I, cause I have context, so I would have to put in my context and then walk to the bathroom and see you take the flashlight. And yeah. You don’t realize that the figure missing it, how important it is.

[00:31:05] And we’ve had, we have a customer that’s looking at a really buying a bunch of wagons and they had someone fall down going out at night, going to the bathroom and they said, we’ll never have another unit without a bathroom. So anyway there’s something for everyone. Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much.

[00:31:32] That’s actually a great point that I wouldn’t have thought of from a,

[00:31:42] the liability risk of obviously anyone could fall at any point in your property, but in the middle of the night, trying to get out of a unit or something like that I could see that being a liability. Let’s talk to Roy from sky. How are you doing? Good. Good. How are you, sir? I’m going to make you wait a little bit. We’re just we got so many things going on here. No, thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me on your show. Very happy to be here. Very happy to be at arc Arvik and I, and Raleigh for excited about the show.

[00:32:07] Yeah. A company’s kayak monitoring products. What we do is we make 4g LTE monitoring devices and we make a vote, a lot of different verticals. And one of them is RV campers and RVs RV vehicles. Our device actually is a. But I, our device called x-ray how to show you a little bit of this thing here and where it does actually somebody monitors movement within a space.

[00:32:30] So what you would do actually. So for the RV owner, it would be placed on the wall of inside the vehicle. And you monitor any kind of movement, entry, exit, or any kind of movement inside the RV. And one movement is detected. You get a push notification, text message or email depending how you want to do that.

[00:32:46] So it’s a monitoring remote monitoring device. It’s all is no power. No, no wife are required. It’s all 4g 5g, LTE cellular and battery power. So an invitation is as easy as go sticking it on the wall. There’s from the back of this magnets. And you basically just put up on the wall and your monitor, what you want a monitor and it move inside your vehicle so that when the owner links.

[00:33:07] You can monitor your, you can monitor your vehicle if you will. And that’s kinda when we added the buy, the device obviously has a lot of applications, here at Orvick with a good RVs, mostly, and presumably it would be sold in the campground store and with a good margin in show, we think it’s an interesting product for the LD community.

[00:33:25] Yeah, that’s pretty much what. Maybe I missed this Roy, but does it have a camera or does it not have a camera? So all our products are noninvasive. So we make products for what kinds of mind situations we make other things that water monitoring, noise monitoring of the devices like that, but they never have cameras because we privacy issues and things like that.

[00:33:44] And we know home rentals and things like that. So no, no camera. It is simply monitors promotion with infrared sensors. If you will. I was just thinking out loud from an RV owner perspective, right? Like obviously you’re right on all the privacy and things, and that’s probably the better path to take, but I was just thinking from an RV owner perspective, if I leave my dog in my trailer and I go out and enjoy the amenities, maybe I want to check in on it.

[00:34:06] Yeah. And also actually one of the things I think about the future would be a actually a temperature monitor or some kind of that actually for the dog, for the, for pets, the left side of the vehicles near the, because we actually have a whole host of different given senses that we actually have devices and every temperature, humidity moving accelerometer is deferred device that actually reads switches on doors and things like that.

[00:34:24] But the device that we’re offering here at this show is simply just infrared device and just a monitoring motion right now. And what basically is testing the waters in kind of the interest of it, because I don’t think we haven’t found any device like that in the RV community or the campground community right now.

[00:34:40] So we are seeing how, what each level is basically. So we’re down here and we think it’s, the device is great, though. It works. It works. You want to Mount to the back door, they started you back to your house or any kind of open your mailbox, whatever you want to monitor. It, monitors all kinds of emotion and immediately alert you to that emotion.

[00:34:56] We sell school, self storage facilities like that to different places where you want to monitor motion where there’s no power and there’s no wifi. It’s our motto. More power on a wifi. No problem. It’s all LT cellular and. Can you change the, can you chain the devices together in a corporate way?

[00:35:12] So you can monitor 10 or 20 of them all we have, yeah, we do. So we actually are at, we were last week at pest world in Las Vegas. A company was, and we actually have Hobbit sensor devices also. So basically there’s a hub, which is the main unit that says and sensors and things monitoring different either order, movement, philosophy, living, sound, that kind of thing.

[00:35:33] So yeah. Yes, we do that also that we did not bring for this show because we were thinking more about the audio and the RVs I just entered into the vehicle is what we’re thinking about here. But it has been a business for over 30 years that we make well printed circuit boards originally and still now also maybe components for very large companies.

[00:35:52] These are finished products of my products and yeah, that’s what we’ll be doing for the. I’m going to give you another sales pitch when you’re on the expo floor tomorrow. And that is that you could put these inside owners, cabins and rental units, and they could monitor all of them to see if they’re safe and secure.

[00:36:11] Is it just any kind of motion movement? Yeah. Obviously with the grappling and the high end type of, it’s they are obvious HD first. Cause the turn that locks on are totally good in different openings and RVs. This is where it’s interesting. The other places locked pretty well, but yes, you could monitor all kinds of motion, whatever you want to monitor when you motion any kind of space.

[00:36:29] Yeah. So from a security standpoint, from an ownership, right? If I’ve got 20, 50, a hundred cabins and I have the peace of mind, knowing that they’re all secure when they’re not being rented or in the winter time or whatever, then I can imagine a lot of people buying those. Yeah. We have for that product until we have a hub and you can sense throughout the whole, cause it’s all a lot of sight it’s filled the whole camp run, actually.

[00:36:51] There’s one has the possibilities do we do? Yeah, we do all kinds of monitoring solutions. Okay. How long is the, one of the things that was interesting to me when I came across your company was that it doesn’t require wifi. It doesn’t require any hard wiring, which I think is great because a lot of people, especially if it’s, you’re only going to have a unit for a couple of years or something you don’t want to nest.

[00:37:12] Hardwire something. So I thought that was great. But how long does the battery last, if say someone wanted to use it if they were storing their trailer or a seat for the off season and they wanted to monitor if someone was breaking into their unit or something, how long does one time?

[00:37:27] Because hopefully they don’t break in and it only, so the batteries or the way it’s work, actually, this is a heartbeat check-in that occurs by once a day. Depends on how you set up to make sure the device is doing what’s supposed to do. But beyond that, it just, when it’s activated, so the device, this is all on Cadem one, it’s a very low frequency band, low Taliban, and it’s made for, not to worry about level of traffic actually.

[00:37:47] So ideally if no one’s breaking in it, it lasts even longer because there’s no singles being used or capacity being used two years, two, three years, four years, actually, depending it’s very long time actually. I If you’re not, if you put on your front door and you’re always setting. Notifications.

[00:38:01] It’s obviously less, but that’s where there is a security worst. Most likely, hopefully there’s no use of the application because it’s securities operations reached. If you work, then it’s very long life inside from you. It’s just the daily or the twice a week, three times a week. Check-in however it’s set up.

[00:38:18] Then actually sending the message. But this is all cattle one. This actually Ben was developed for these low power applications. So they can stay in the field for very long time. The places now stay 5 80, 10 years in the field. Actually it depends what they’re doing. So it’s not really new, cool technology coming up and we hope what we can do.

[00:38:35] Also provide some registry near. I can see that. I’m so sorry. I could just see that being useful if it’s like you were saying with people that have a lot of cabins, and if you’re wanting to reserve that battery and they’ve got a bunch of kids coming in and out during their stay, I could see it being really beneficial if you have a like the docking station in place, but then you’re taking it in and out of the unit as someone’s checking in or as they check out your housekeeping installs the unit when it’s not being used.

[00:39:03] So that. Burning through your battery and you don’t need to be monitoring the comings and goings of people while they’re actually your wife. And you want to do that now. So yeah. There’s all kinds of applications for it. Awesome device actually. Yeah. Yeah. Monitoring the comings and goings. I feel like there’s a use case there and I don’t want to leave you out Roy.

[00:39:24] Cause we did have an interesting idea for Alex. Like I feel like there’s a use case here for you to rent these or give these to your guests. They can just stick them on the outside of their RV doors. And then you can know if anybody’s coming out and making noise during quiet time at night and sound like a security guard or an attack dog over there or something, right?

[00:39:42] Yeah. Because there’s all kinds of applications to monitoring motion. I can’t leave it on my front door. Sometimes I’m not monitored by wife.

[00:39:55] Wow. Oh my gosh. Brian’s talking about attack dog. Although everybody has breed restrictions and we all know that’s a hot topic in the industry. Older doesn’t have breed restrictions, just the guests. So the owner could have a dog or one of those robot dogs, like the Boston dynamics ones. You could have a robot dog that’s just deployed with an automatic gate.

[00:40:17] Whenever somebody leaves their RV after 2:00 AM, it could be all kinds of things. Wearable. I see those in every camp robot and attack dogs everywhere. I guess I’m late to the party then I thought it was an original idea, but yeah, you better snap those up before Christmas. Here. They’re all the rage this year in camper, bathrooms are probably a better investment than we originally realized.

[00:40:46] Upgrade it. So this is holistic, right? You can force them to upgrade their accommodations to include a bathroom. If they don’t want to be attacked by a robot dog, that’s more revenue for the campgrounds. It integrates with ideal software because we can track it higher revenue in CRM. I never ceased to be amazed each week.

[00:41:05] I think that you demonstrate all the clear reasons why you’re not a campground owner and then the following week, the price new do it himself. I know sometimes he says things to me and I’m like, how does one even come up with that thought? How does that thought even enter someone’s mind. I killed it.

[00:41:22] He has to have a bet with somebody, there’s words that somebody gives him like five words and he has to use them in a sentence. So that’s the only way we should see if we can orchestrate that, Joe, we will we’ll start that next week. That’s angular or Carrie, give me the word.

[00:41:38] So you guys decide, oh, so Brian wanted me to walk you around a little bit and I, can you flip that and maybe just walk through and show us the X before and talk to us while you’re doing it, or I don’t know if I can flip the camera around, but anyway,

[00:42:01] I glamping tents from Davis tents. They’re not here, so I’m not gonna go into their tent. And look around, there’s

[00:42:13] a nice wooden floor platform. And then over right next to it over here is a tree hops yert. They have only half of it set up right here, but it just goes and wraps around the tree. And then and then it’s like a year. I don’t know, I haven’t talked to him. So I don’t know if that, if it’s off the ground or sits on the ground or how that works, but I saw it in the front.

[00:42:36] Oh, that looks cool. Okay. Yeah. You could like, what if you build like a realistic looking tree and have a elevator, like a bell waiter inside it? Where do you send the food up? Yeah, he’ll put in Bellator on their word salad lists. The Brian, I’m just going to say, if we start the game already, I can do this.

[00:42:54] Like I know I can do this. So we’re going to have accepted.

[00:42:57] Actually, I’m coming over here and it’s have a familiar face, Casey’s over here and playing back

[00:43:11] every year and bringing something something to the table here. I heard there was going to be three different bags. I get free reservation software for a year. They said I heard there was gonna be beverages. We have beer and wine all the time. Look at Canada, dangle, the carrot of alcoholic beverages and that going to make them a very popular spot.

[00:43:36] We’ll see more vendors, a little closer to you.

[00:43:47] Nice. Yeah, they always do something elaborate. And I know a couple of the people are probably doing it to you. I remember the stay list in 2019, I think had a little what was it? A storage container that they cut out and had their booth set up inside. And so there’s always really cool.

[00:43:59] Elaborate setups. Yeah. We’ll come over. We’ll come over into the dirt. They actually brought an RV in here. So I’ll show you guys that too. The real question that I’m dying to know is are their puppies. I have not seen it again, but I think Paula thing and Paul was not there. So they were planning to do it well, when they had talked about possibly having in-person last year, they said they were going to bring it back and.

[00:44:26] Honestly, that’s the only reason I went to Arvik in 2019, there were puppies. Tell Arvik that. Not supposed to say that out loud, I’m only getting these back then. Hopefully, you walk out of the banquet rooms in, there were literal puppies that you could just pick up and cuddle. I don’t know how there’s anything bad about that.

[00:44:49] You can see the dirt. Nice. Oh yeah. They brought me a little classy or a flex me a ban.

[00:45:02] Can you enter me for, is there a draw for the rest of the show? I stand there and enter all of us and fill out the forms. I don’t think it has a drawing. Unfortunately, we can just create one

[00:45:22] yeah. You’re going to give it away for four minutes. You have nine minutes or whoever wins it, show up and be like, Hey, that’s mine. I want it. I want that. Yeah. Unfortunately, all of the people that are there, they have three people at their booth and they’re all busy talking to people right now. So I couldn’t.

[00:45:42] Yeah. Great. Yeah. Awesome. Trade show has even started yet.

[00:45:55] Right under the 500 sign. Mine is not near as interesting. I didn’t bring my plastic motor home in here, but that’s our set up. And unfortunately, since we’re traveling right now, we did not get to bring our six foot tall Android phone. So it didn’t fit in my pocket. So some, like I would probably have a booth there.

[00:46:19] If my booth wasn’t stuck in Missouri at someone because I was smart and didn’t foresee COVID coming and not being able to get to Missouri again. But anyway, your booth is at Joe’s house. Yeah, my booth is at Joe’s house cause Joe was driving it around for me, a couple places to the state shows last year and yeah.

[00:46:40] And then Ovid and then all the shows got canceled. And so I think we went home from Wisconsin. Never had a chance to get it back. So no wonder the storage fees at the do MIGS house for, they shouldn’t be a lot higher than they are my ear off the show. How do I cut her up? My nine-year-old daughter, I was telling somebody, we just redid our basement and she was telling somebody about how we have a bathroom down there.

[00:47:06] She goes we don’t have a bathroom down there yet. There’s going to be one right now in stores. Dad’s friends are Mr. Bryan’s stuff. Wow. Seriously. I think I can offset that with good, like sidebar advice for your children as they grow. I’m really good at that. Terrible. What you wish for Joe or Brian might ship, like I sorry, six or seven perky robots to your house and giant ones for your children to have I think if I started charging a little bit to Brian, he would be more inclined to send more stuff. He’s I’m just going to do this to annoy him. And even if I have to, even if

[00:47:45] she’s on board for storage. Yeah. So what is this? This is for kids to play on. Cool. Can you crawl through there, Joe? I don’t know if they want me crawling on their stuff. I might pop it

[00:48:01] on their birthday. I have a whole set up here. It looks pretty cool. We went to a resort a few weeks ago and my my children loved playing on me. They had so much fun playing on these gross says there’s no room for robots at the domains house, Brian. Oh, Rose’s watching. There is, there’s always room for robots rose.

[00:48:23] And if not, I can send suckers and candy and brownies and all kinds of things. I give that to Angela’s children all the time, or at least I attempt to virtually, Ooh, that’s pretty Joe. What’s that? What that is? This is I guess that’s the farm type restaurants. I’m not sure exactly. Yeah. They do such a great job

[00:48:45] on top of their, I feel like that’s like close to the size of my house, but then there’s also, they’re really huge, but seating area out front. It’s so pretty. I just, yeah, like I love it. I want one of those. I’ll send you a motion. We’re going to start a drawing for that one to know what else or just raffling off without their knowledge.

[00:49:19] It’s fine. And then here’s a Bush, a safari tent needs. So this is actually like a real, it’s heavy material. Wow.

[00:49:37] Very dark.

[00:49:42] Oh, sorry. It’s too dark for you. They have a, it has a second room in there. Okay. I guess this uses a seating room or a sleeping room for Kim’s eyes. Probably big enough to put in a. Nice. Okay. Yeah. See that gives you all kinds of different accommodation options that you can put in different areas of your park and you create little villages and all kinds of things.

[00:50:05] Yeah. I love the idea of just adding these really unique experiences to your park. I definitely would be exploring, having a couple of different types of these if I was still still an operator for they’re not here, but we were just at cherry hill park in Washington, DC, and they have these glamping pods.

[00:50:24] I haven’t seen, I haven’t seen them before, but it’s just a little pond that has three beds in it, but they’re really there. They would be really cool instead of just your traditional tent camping. So for a really small glamping site, I would think that would have a great return. Yeah. Wow. So many great ideas out there and we have a regular park model over here and then they also have a log cabin style park model.

[00:50:50] I feel like that’s gotta be terrible to be like the inventor of the park model and have Joe walked by and be like, this is the regular watch, the special ones over here. And this is the regular one. No is a salesman. Wow. So this is land tests or log cabins. Oh yeah. Yeah. Which takes beautiful cabins.

[00:51:11] They’d been on the show before. They’re handcrafted and just really it’s real wood. It’s funny if I remember correctly, Pennsylvania. Yeah. There is here in Cleveland, but there is a family in there

[00:51:28] actually staying,

[00:51:29] So people to sleep in the expo hall in the park. Yeah, honey, off of that, I think I don’t know. I don’t know how many campground owners want to go and spend time in a semi campground. We just got away from the, they just left at a park added to the house and buyer program. So you can wake up in the morning and you can have your coffee and pancakes and the vendor comes to you and your cabin.

[00:51:56] Yeah, I like it now. We’re all offering great ideas. It’s spiraled really quickly.

[00:52:09] Oh, Joe, I appreciate your time so much helping us. I wish I could be there in person. Yeah, it’s a shame, but thanks for giving us the second next step. I’m sure. I’m sure my walking through here is almost like real life. Yeah, absolutely. Pretty close. Exactly. Yeah. Next year, you’re going to have the drone and you can get some VR, 3d goggles that we can tour.

[00:52:32] And

[00:52:36] she said, yes, Rosa. And he said, yes. So I’m waiting for him to yell at me in the comments. Literally I have the chat pool up and I’m waiting for rose to comment in there. Or just find there’s gotta be a drone vendor. We can just have a giveaway for you, Joe. Oh, he left. So it was probably, it was like, you need to leave the show right now buying so many things.

[00:53:01] Leslie is asking in the chat. If there’s a list of vendors and contact info, I’m guessing that’s at Arvik. Yeah, I think they have the list of the vendors. I don’t know if they provide the contact information, but Leslie, if there’s anybody that you want to get in touch with, just shoot us an email. And we’ll, I’m sure between all of us on the show, we can figure out how to get your contact info or something like that.

[00:53:22] But I yeah, so some of the profiles of, if you’re looking at the actual LHC websites and looking at the list of vendors, when you’re looking at the floor plan, then you can click on different booths and you can see who’s where some of them built out their profiles, some of them didn’t. So that’s actually how I found the people that joined us today.

[00:53:42] So the people that actually had information saved on their boons for contact is who I contacted. Yeah, it just depends on who you’re looking at. So I’m going to Leslie just pop this into the chat on the Facebook channel to It’s just the OHC E a website. I will get that in there for you.

[00:54:00] I could also just PM it to you. Rose said she was distracted, but it’s too late. Rose. Sorry. We already said that he could get a drone. Oh, he’s back. Joe’s back. Oh yeah. Maybe he was, he left Joe drone with the storage fees. He’s going to make off of Brian.

[00:54:21] That’s fair. That’s a valid point. There we go. That’s funny storage for drones. It’s a new company. Yeah. Direct trades. We only accept payment in drone,

[00:54:38] an awful business model. Does he know Brian’s going to run with it? Just wait. I see it on the tip of his tongue. He’s ready to go. Okay. This is really spiraled so quickly. I just, I know we’re almost at an hour. Do we have, do you have any parting thoughts? Let’s give Roy and Alex who were still on with us.

[00:54:57] Do you guys have any parting thoughts? Tell us for the people who might be watching, who were at Arvik booth numbers, times of the expo that we’re going to be there. Yeah, I bought the startup 5 26, I think six

[00:55:16] Alex. Oh, I’m sorry, Roy. Add a little bit, so yeah, Roy five, one more time. Roll your booth. 5 26 of 26, 5 26 tonight, six to nine. Okay. Before the show up on time, eight 30 to four tomorrow. Cool. Alex Booth number in ideal is at 14, 17, same time on 17. Okay. Unless we’re over at GameSpot, it’s getting a beer right out of the number of those booths.

[00:55:52] As they really 1400 vendors no, they have blocks. They have a blocks every 100. So every row is a new number, assignment that seems like it would be easier to find. So they put some thought into that. Hopefully it looks like we’ll see right above my head here, they have big banners on which role you’re on.

[00:56:11] So if you’re looking for the 500, you would just got a $500. Thanks. Great. When I was looking over the vendor listing for this year, I, for me, anyway, I feel like there were a lot of vendors listed that I haven’t seen in the past. And so I thought that was really interesting and also really cool to see some new products, new faces and things like that in in the industry and at the expo.

[00:56:36] So hopefully really great things. Yeah. That’s awesome. And I put the website up there. Thanks. Kira. It’s replying Lizzie, bring up. What else, if anybody else who wants it? arabic.org/o H C E obviously it’s probably too late to fly to rally and attend the show. Maybe not. But I think I heard that they don’t they don’t have any more full registrations available because of, food orders and all of that stuff being completed and maxed out their capacity.

[00:57:01] So I heard that too, but there’s a really great list of exhibitors and stuff on the app via the link. So for anyone who can’t make it down but it’s interested in anybody who chatted with today or anybody else on that list. There’s contact info and lots of great stuff available there to check.

[00:57:20] Awesome. Thank you, Joe. Really appreciate your time taking us around the expo hall. Thanks Alex for joining us. Thank you to Heather. She had to drop off, but really appreciate her insight into the education and the things that she’s attended to as always, Cara, appreciate you being here with us.

[00:57:34] Angela. Appreciate you being here. She’ll be a regular part of the show going forward. That’s from Modern Campground. And then I don’t know. Do we have any parting thoughts? Anybody else want to say anything? Cara, Angela? No, I think it’s an exciting, it’s always a fun time for this industry this time of the year where, there’s a bit of a shift for certainly those parks that are more seasonal, but I think, there’s lots of folks all over the place at conference.

[00:57:55] Dealers, the dealers in both in both the U S and Canada are gathered in Vegas right now as well for their convention. So lots of cool, exciting stuff happening. It’s great to see the industry continue to grow this way. Love it. Yeah, I just want to reiterate again, like Roy Alex, make sure that you stay in touch with Angela.

[00:58:13] We’ll write some articles for you on Modern Campground. We want to keep telling those stories and that we are providing coverage of Arvik on Modern Campground dot com. We’re also doing some coverage and RVDA convention that is happening there in Las Vegas. I’m so super excited about that stuff.

[00:58:26] And as a reminder, as always, we are syndicated as a podcast and all the major platforms, Google, Spotify, apple, all those kinds of places. This episode will be available afterwards on MC Fireside Chats dot com as well as all of those platforms. And so we hope you’ll join us next week. I think our topics a little bit in flux, we’re trying to get a couple people on who are going to the Koa show and some other people there as well.

[00:58:45] Do we have anybody confirmed yet? Angela? Are we still working on that? No, not yet. We’re still working on it. I reach out to guys, anybody in the audience that’s attending those shows. Please get in touch. Yeah, that would be great. Love to chat. Perfect. All right. Thank you everybody for joining us again.

[00:59:01] We will see you next week and have a good time at Arvik take care. Thanks guys. Bye-bye

[00:59:09]