“Like most other companies we had gone heavy into Live Demos when the Virus broke out in early March,” said Dave Rakauskas of Colonial Saw. “Now that IWF has been cancelled we will be even more active on this. We had setup a regular Thursday morning Zoom livestream we call Coffee with Colonial where we demo a different grinding machine each week.” Colonial has also done several Lamello product trainings for dealers using Zoom meetings. He said they will add Striebig Dealer product trainings to cover the new machine features that would have been exhibited at the show.

The company also plans to do its own virtual trade show around the time IWF would have happened. “We will probably do one full day for Lamello, one day for Striebig, and one day for our grinding line with a formal demonstration schedule setup for each machine that we would have had at the show,” said Rakauskas, noting the event is tentatively slated for August or September.

Products that had been planned to debut at IWF included Lamello’s new Cabineo M6 connector that allows you to join different materials like wood to metal, phenolic to metal, wood to phenolic, using a threaded insert receiver. “On the Striebig side we had a new Dado/V-grooving/Cove/beadboard cutter option on our Standard machine,” he said. “Both of these will surely be part of our virtual trade show in August or September.”

Colonial Saw stands ready to help shops rethinking their operations after shutdowns. “If you think the economy will bounce back like it always has, it’s a great time,” he said. “Interest rates are low, currency exchange is advantageous for European equipment, shops have time to research machines, time to plan and arrange plant layouts, time for proper training and ramp up, and vendors are giving pricing incentives. The Best way to get help from us is to call, email, or inquire on our website .”

Rakauskas noted that many of Colonial’s customers were designated essential businesses and remained open. “We have been at full staff all along and haven’t missed a beat, shipping parts out of Massachusetts and California every day,” he said. “We already had the technical infrastructure setup for work from home so the transition to having half our staff working from home was seamless.”