A Day At Subcon

An insight into a day at Subcon - The UK’s premier subcontract manufacturing supply chain show.

Last week, I got the chance to join the FINALLY Agency team on the 2nd day of the three-day Subcon experience. Subcon brings together the best suppliers and latest innovations to help build new partnerships and optimize business strategies for the manufacturing and engineering industry. 

The FINALLY team was based on our insanely cool stand where we were doing free headshots, offering goodie bags & giving out OUR FIRST ENGINE ROOM MAGAZINE! We also got to meet all of you lovely people, and had the chance to host three talks designed to demystify digital marketing. 

On day one, the queen of SEO Ella did a talk on how to maximize your website’s potential, and day two was lead by social media guru Chris who explored all things LinkedIn and the importance of content. It was day three that we saw the main man himself, Rob taking the stage to speak on LinkedIn lead generation, something we are really passionate about here at FINALLY! 

If you didn’t get the chance to see the talks, take a look at our presentations here or drop us a message and we'll send you across the recordings.

I know how excited the whole team was to see people in person again, and to also meet people we have spoken to over email but haven’t had the chance to meet in ‘real-life.’

We also got to catch up with a few of The Engine Room’s special guests such as Dean Munkley from Qimtek, Lucy Edgar & Colin Noble from Human Everything, and Philip Anthony from DP Engineering. Matt, FINALLY’s Inbound Marketing Manager, was particularly happy to meet the legendary Industry Insights contributor Peter Francis from MAT Ltd!

A personal highlight for me was getting an opportunity to discover the world of manufacturing and engineering, as I’m a newbie to the sector. Not only was I able to be in the audience for Chris’s epic LinkedIn talk, but I also sat in on a discussion panel between 6 manufacturing and engineering companies on the topic of reshoring, and if in fact it was a fad or a trend. 

Charlotte, FINALLY’S Head of Operations, joined me to watch the discussion and found Darren Pritchar from Foundry Training Services Limited points on the key marketing messages UK subtractors should be putting out if they are looking to win ‘reshored’ work particularly interesting, such as evidence of real sustainability and being able to show good practices. and, along with some of the challenges that Brexit and the pandemic have brought. 

One of the key points throughout the whole discussion was that the UK needs to be prepared to pay more, to step up and take responsibility to be able to bring it back to the UK. I personally think it would be great to bring it back to the UK, especially with it being one of the best manufacturing countries in the world. From what I gathered from the debate we will need future investment, staffing, and added apprenticeship schemes to bring younger people into the industry.

It was great to talk to the FINALLY team after the event about what their favorite stands and their top talks were. A few stands that stood out for us were Ash Technologies who design and manufacture innovative digital microscopes; their team were giving out live demonstrations into how the microscopes work and showcasing their smart new inspection systems, Inspex 3 and Omni 3, and measurement solutions. 3DPRINTUK are specialists in low volume plastic part manufacture using state of the art SLS 3D printing systems, and it was very interesting to see the different results achievable with SLS vs FDM printing

We may have had a few biased votes on best talk but Ella, Chris & Rob did a great job engaging and informing their audiences, as well as packing so much value into their talks. 

It was also great for the team to be able to watch some of the other talks and learn more about what is currently happening within the manufacturing and engineering industry, especially since Covid & Brexit. Nuha, FINALLY’s New Business Executive, went to check out Professor Richard Hague, one of the most well-known academics in the manufacturing and engineering field. He spoke about additive manufacturing and discussed different kinds of materials that can be used in this process as well as its uses within the manufacturing industry. This type of 3D printing is unique because it uses the density of the materials to create stronger products, and is showing some promising results in government-funded experiments on the process.

I found Subcon really informative and I know the whole team absolutely loved being a part of the event, seeing and meeting familiar faces, and hearing all the positive feedback from the industry about how FINALLY Agency is approaching marketing. We had a blast, and are already looking forward to heading back again next year!