CES On A Shoestring

I stared at the ticket buying screen, hand hovering over the “enter” key, pondering whether a trip to CES was worth it. We are a start up company in the pet wearable space, finalizing a prototype, preparing for launch, and generally losing mountains of sleep. We are still begging funds from folks who love and trust us and trying to build a hardware technology company from scratch. Should we spend $100 each for tickets to go to CES, the largest gathering of technology companies in the world? Was I really even asking myself that question? Of course we should. Click. Confirm. Cool. Now to figure out how to get there without breaking our bank. Holding CES in the biggest adult playground in the world, Las Vegas, makes that wincingly difficult. In spite of that, two of us attended CES for a frenetic 24-hour period for $853.

Here’s how we did it.

Step 1: Don’t Showcase — Just Visit

We were not going to CES to showcase our smart collar company, Scollar, among the dazzling array of high tech offerings. Not yet. We were just hoping to glimpse the competition we will face this year as we launch. And, let’s be honest, it is so much fun to be around the whirring, clicking, pulsing brouhaha that is CES I frequently found myself wandering off to play at a new booth instead of doing reconnaissance on the companies I had on my list. My partner even bumped into the French Economic Minister who was doing his own sort of exploring. Six hours evaporated in a matter of seconds.

Step 2: Travel Like a Bohemian

We flew on the cheap using an airline we have never used before (and most likely will never use again). Our flights were delayed due to weather and general oddball issues on both legs, so we ate and drank at the airports. Airport food prices are miniscule in comparison to CES Las Vegas food prices. We arrived into Las Vegas in the wee hours of the morning, which is not a problem for Vegas unless you stay at a mobster hangout downtown, where the streets were eerily empty. No partying for us… we dropped into bed like stones. The next morning we took a $.20 car sharing ride to the venue thanks to the CES16 discount code. Boom!

Step 3: Have A Plan

We split up at the entrance, each of us with different vendors to find and investigate. We started at the Convention Center then migrated to the Sands. In retrospect, we should have started at the Sands, which is where the wearable companies held court. And boy did they. The two floors of the Sands Expo were insanely packed with every imaginable wearable that looked exactly like every other wearable with a different logo. Beautiful women in fitted clothing and muscular men with tight shirts abounded. What was I supposed to be looking for? Oh right, the pet wearables. Scattered among the human wearables, the doggies with GPS and activity trackers were making their cute little faces known. I wonder if the fine CES folks will allow me to bring my own beautiful people to parade around with puppies wearing a Scollar…

Step 4: Know Your Competition

The good news is we did not see anything like what we are building, a smart collar platform. Whew. The second good news is that the pet wearables we did see are all new companies. None of the traditional pet companies were there. Double whew. The industry is still as ripe for disruption as it was yesterday before we barreled through these halls like demons. Loitering around these booths and overhearing what potential customers thought of the products was immensely interesting and informative. OK, don’t do frivolous things with smart pet collar, check!

Step 5: Write Everything Down

The flight home found us frantically capturing everything we had seen and heard in those enormous halls of innovation. What types of wearables attracted the most attention? What did the booth look like? Was the booth busy? What Chinese companies were there selling the very same thing? What types of people were looking at the products? What tiny little details could I uncover, like that high end clothing store business card at that certain pet wearable booth…hmmm.

I was immensely proud of the fact that we got in and out of Vegas for under $1,000. Next year won’t be nearly that cheap. But, hopefully we will earn it back 100-fold in press and orders. Oh, and we will play…Vegas style.