Last month, a couple of us from Ikan traveled to Beijing, China to attend BIRTV (China’s version of NAB) as well as to tour the facilities of our top vendors and manufacturers across China. We take a trip to China every year because it helps us see what’s going on in that country and what would be interesting to bring to the US. We were excited to meet our vendors and manufacturers, see new products, and eat good food. So how was the trip to China? Here’s a recap.
BIRTV
The Beijing International Radio, TV, and Film Exhibition (BIRTV) is the most influential exhibition in the broadcasting industry in Asia. At the event, you get to see the latest developments and products in the broadcasting industry.
Our team visited all our vendors’ booths at the exhibition including PD Movie, E-Image, NiSi, Tilta, Lightstar, and our manufacturers for the Lyra soft lights, Rayden LED lights, and EC1 gimbal stabilizer.
One vendor we visited was PD Movie where Barry, a product manager at Ikan, did an interview with Newsshooter. In the interview, Barry talks about a variety of products including the Remote Live, Remote Air Pro for iPhones, and the Remote Air 2, a wireless follow focus handset.
While at BIRTV, we saw many new items and vendors. An interesting item we saw was the new WenPod single axis GoPro and phone stabilizer. In addition, we saw many waterproof LED lights, which can be very useful for filmmakers when shooting outside. We also talked to our manufacturers for our Lyra and Rayden LED lights and are looking forward to the release of the Mylo 8, which will come in either bicolor (MB8) or daylight (MW8).
When we visited the E-Image booth, we saw some new tripods and new mounts so be on the lookout for those coming soon to the ikancorp.com website. While at BIRTV, we also met up with members of the Beholder team to prep for the release of our latest gimbal stabilizer for DSLR and mirrorless cameras, the EC1. We finished up the software programming for the product in order to make it ready for release. The EC1 is now available for purchase on the Ikan website.
Another vendor we visited at BIRTV was NiSi, a brand of high quality cinema filters. In addition, we met up with the Tilta team to check out their latest products.
Vendor Meetings and Factory Tours
During our trip to China, we visited 7 different cities on 7 different days to fully assess the capacity and capability of our vendors and manufacturers.
We first visited the Lightstar facilities in Beijing since it was close to BIRTV and then made our way to the Lyra and Rayden factory. While there, we made sure to check processes in order to ensure that we are consistently bringing quality products to the US and to all our customers.
After Beijing, we went to E-Image in the city of Ningbo to see their factory and showrooms. We wanted to make sure that we had a good communications system with them and ensured that they could handle the product demands.
After visiting E-Image, we traveled to southern China to visit several factories. One place we visited was the PD Movie facilities, where we got to see employees testing motors as well as future products. We also saw more product testing when we visited NiSi. At NiSi, they have testing equipment to show how well their filters work against competitors.
Later, we visited a factory to see the production of our 4K on-camera field monitors. On our visit, we made sure that everyone there was designing to our specifications. A cool thing that we saw was a group working on OLED screens and technology, which will be great for future products. We also got to see the crew testing the products and ensured that they were making high quality products.
We also visited Tilta, which was high tech and modern. They create rigs and the Gravity, a 3-axis handheld gimbal system. All in all, we had a good time seeing all the different factories and all our different lines of products.
Overall
The experience was great because we got to meet many vendors and were able to finally put a face to a name. We were excited to meet the engineers behind the products as well. Many of them are working to make sure that we have products available for purchase in the U.S. The trip helped us review and fix any issues in our supply chain as well as helped with the company’s internal development.
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