Stan Farnsworth, Chief Marketing Officer, PulseForge Corp.

If someone told me 2 years ago that Sono-Tek would be predicting record sales during a pandemic in which we could barely travel I would have never believed it. However, this fiscal year (ending February 28, 2022) is expected to be our highest annual sales on record. That success is in spite of very little travel and only two mediocre trade shows last year.

Can the success with minimal face to face interaction continue? Probably, with the adoption and almost universal acceptance of remote communications. However, that is not how I want my team to interact with our customers.

Although Sono-Tek has become highly effective at implementing virtual interactions for lab testing, technical presentations, factory acceptance tests, and even site acceptance tests, the intangibles of meeting face to face, the full understanding of a customer’s application, and the learning that takes place in person is impossible to fully replicate.

We plan on exhibiting at APEX and will be looking for other trade show opportunities especially once this current COVID-19 wave has passed. As for onsite visits, I predict that we will start to see them ramp up in the first or second quarter in North America, with Europe opening next, and finally Asia later in the year.