ICA In Nashville, 2026. A Recap.

Next to "hey, turn off that light over there", or "what do you mean you lost your coat?", the phrase "gotta love a good roadtrip" gets thrown around a lot in our household. Well, maybe not a lot. But, I definitely remember someone saying that at some point around here. Was probably me.

We've had a few days since we've been home from the drive to and from Nashville to digest this year's ICA show. We're still a little tired, woefully behind on emails, and the OhmCo Bubble Wagon is making a tired, groaning sound during morning school drop-offs, but our Nashville experience was a positive one! Despite a few minor bumps and bruises along the way, we were able to come home feeling accomplished and a little mentally refreshed after getting to visit with familiar faces, some clients we've only met through grainy Google Meets chats, and new friends that are passionate about this industry and are interested in carving out their little slice of the pie (with our help).

While these records are more for us to use as reference points to preserve our memories (that's another phrase --- "hey, remember that one time..."), or to provide a convincing alibi, we do want to also pen out some of our industry observations from the show and beyond, mostly so we can look back on this next year while we're all plugged in to one massive AI-driven supercomputer and comment on just how wrong we were.

The Trip Itself

Nashville 2024 was the year we brought our two kiddos down to the show and made the real road-trip effort. This year, they stayed back --- our youngest went camping with my parents while our eighteen year old daughter tidied up her last few weeks of highschool. Ever.

Fewer stops for us on the way down. Melanie and I spent a night outside of Indianapolis to make the next day of travel a little easier. We stopped down in Louisville and swerved to an exit last second to spend a little time seeing Churchhill Downs. We're not gamblers, but our family does have a history of throwing and attending mildly-lavish derby parties most years which usually come paired with hat-judging contests (with categories like "heaviest hat" and "widest brim") and finger sandwiches. We learned about the dead horse under the statue in the front commons, copped a few things to bring home to the family, and discovered they make unique drinking glasses for each year of the race that are never reproduced, which was interesting.

From there we headed straight to the convention center in Nashville to schlep in our considerable amount of gear. The biggest advantage, or disadvantage, of driving ten and a half hours to the show is that you can pack a Ford Transit van absolutely full of things you normally wouldn't have considered bringing along.

We set up our new booth display with only a few minor setbacks (we unfortunately misgauged just how tall our walls were) and headed to the hotel we booked in East Nashville. But FIRST, we visited a local Kroger and pilfered their floral section for fresh flowers to bring to the booth for the next few days in honor of mother's day. Melanie came up with a great idea to use a hydroponic grow station as a holder for the flowers in the booth to keep them fresh over the three show days while also being a nice, lit, eye-catching display.

We stayed in an amazing church-turned-hotel in the heart of hipsterdom called The Russell. The place was quirky and weird and melded these old, traditional construction elements into clean and modern touches that was right up our alley. With no elevator, we loaded our luggage into a painfully slow, but AWESOME "luggage lift" that brought our gear to our second floor room which overlooked the lobby and had bunk beds.

We spent Sunday finishing our setup at the booth before Mel headed off to a dinner with the Women in Carwash crew. Mike found a place to eat in East Nashville, but waited to long to go and was greeted with an enormous line.

The Show

One of my favorite things to do at any show is to ask about foot traffic to every single vendor we know. We consistently hear different answers from everyone, which ranges from "this year is dead" to "this year's been pretty good". While I don't necessarily want to get too deep into talking about how many people stopped by and leads, Mel and I both agreed that the show was busy.

The conversations we had were a little more pointed and direct this year, with the feeling that operators are looking to spend and invest a little more intentionally. AI is, of course, the biggest topic, and seeing how everyone is integrating it into everything is exciting and a little disconcerting. Like with any tool, the vendors that are using it intelligently and connecting it in unique ways to existing workflows are the ones that are going to have staying power. Mel spoke about generative AI during the Nashville show two years ago to a packed room, back when the tech was still in its adoptive infancy, and it's incredible to see where the consumer side of things have developed towards in just those two short years. In two more years we'll have a fully interactive Mel hologram to man the booth while we take naps.

Like we alluded to higher up the page, we were able to catch up with some good friends, many of which came from across the world, from Australia to Denmark and beyond. We've become extremely enamored with the European carwash equipment and tech and want to make more of a push to attend more international shows in the future. Some great conversations around this.

Another conversation to-be-had with most people is making the comparison between Vegas and Nashville. We love the drivability of Nashville, the relatively slower pace, and the ease of getting around the convention center. The pressure feels a little lessened compared with the Vegas counterpart.

Our booth this year was a lot of fun. We forewent the inflatable this year in lieu of lighted backwalls, the aforementioned flower station, and a table full of floral legos, which were a huge hit. Keeping with the mother's day theme, we handed out small lego flower sets to bring home. Most of them were gone by the end of the first day.

ICA and the partnering associations that put on the bus tours did a good job with the event, but a few of the biggest feedback circles kept creeping up in conversations. I'll try to list out what I remember.

The New Company Pavillion Problem: Finding ways to drive people to the NCP booths seems to always be a bit of an issue. This year's separate floor, despite holding talks and events, seems to have still been a barrier to getting attendees to visit and spend any significant amount of time with the new vendors.

Are Trade Shows Still Fulfilling A Purpose?: This borders on existentialism, but are trade shows still fulfilling the same purpose and achieving the same results as they used to? We're seeing more of a trend towards vendor-hosted events having more of a direct impact on vendor/buyer relationships. With significant sponsor space going unfulfilled at this year's show, are we going to see more of a push away from investing as many resources in shows going forward?

The END

Ultimately, we feel like things in Nashville were successful. We have laundry to do and a backlog of emails to catch up on that's longer than a CVS receipt. I'll be downstairs if you need me.