Reflecting on ConExpo with REMco’s president

Says REMco president Kevin Cadwalader: “I thought the show was very well laid out, [particularly] the way the aggregates [exhibits] are situated all in one place. I thought the people who came to visit had things you could help them with. They were looking for solutions. I think the quality of the people who visited was very high.” Photo: P&Q Staff

As Pit & Quarry’s editors traversed ConExpo-Con/Agg last week, they asked exhibitors to share insights about their experience at the March 14-18 trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center. P&Q editor-in-chief Kevin Yanik caught up with Kevin Cadwalader, president of REMco (Rock Engineered Machinery Co.), at the company’s Central Hall booth on the second-to-last day of the show.

Yanik: What’s your take on the show?

Cadwalader: I thought the show was very well laid out, [particularly] the way the aggregates [exhibits] are situated all in one place. I thought the people who came to visit had things you could help them with. They were looking for solutions. I think the quality of the people who visited was very high.

We have several things we’ll follow up with afterward. Several people have made commitments. It’s been a very good show for that.

Yanik: How did people find you at the show? Did they make a point to find you, or did they just stumble by?

Cadwalader: There are those people who stumble in, but a lot of the people who came were looking to find us. They came looking for us.

We had appointments with customers like we always do, but there were people we had never met before in the booth – and they came specifically looking for us. They had things we could help them with. That’s really what it’s all about.

Yes, we make equipment. But it’s really about solving problems for customers. It’s coming up with a solution to their issue. A lot of times that solution includes our equipment. We’ll be the first ones to tell them if we don’t think we can help you. We’ll even point them to somebody who might.

Yanik: What messages were you trying to impart on ConExpo-Con/Agg visitors?

Cadwalader: A lot of manufacturers are running long lead times but, for us, the lead times are fairly short because we’re like a ‘boutique’ manufacturer. We really focus on the VSI. That’s our bread and butter, and because of that I’m not making a hot plant one week and a crusher the next week. This is what we do, so we can keep our lead times down to where we’re eight to 10 weeks – whereas everybody else is 18, 20, 25 weeks or more to get something [out].

Yanik: Are your lead times catching the attention of ConExpo-Con/Agg visitors as you share that detail?

Cadwalader: It is. I’ve had several people say: ‘How do you do that?’ I say: ‘It’s very simple. This is all we do.’ We ‘stuffed the pipe’ a while ago so we can keep [lead times] fairly short.

Yanik: Is there anything you’d like to see evolve with the show? Is there anything lacking with the show?

Cadwalader: I think the show is getting very big. I asked several customers what they think about it. They even said: ‘The show is so big now that we break our people up.’ For example, somebody goes to see the crusher guys, another goes to see the paver guys, and so forth. Then, they all kind of get together at the end of the day and compare notes because [the show] is way too big for one guy. You’d spend all week here if you tried to cover it all.

Yanik: Tell me about the demographic of the customer coming through the booth. Who are they?

Cadwalader: There’s always people who are in management roles. Sometimes, you get a guy who is an operations person. He’ll come in, talk and you’ll have a good conversation. Then, either later that day or the next day, he comes back with a higher-elevation person who says: ‘Look, I met with this guy, and this is what he told me. Can you talk about that?’ But that’s not really unusual.

I don’t think the position of the people coming to visit is different. I think the knowledge of the people coming to visit is different, though.