VoxBox at The Podcast Show

“..this is EXACTLY what we need when we travel!” Lewis Goodall

I have been to a lot of trade shows during my “other” career. In over the 30 years as an independent film producer, I have spent about 6 months of my life pounding the halls and pavements of Berlin, Cannes, Los Angles and, back in the day, Milan.

But always as a buyer, never as a seller.

Renting a small booth at The Design Centre in Islington in late May 2023 for The Podcast Show was a nerve-wracking, surreal and totally energising experience.​

We were placed up, out of the way (I initially felt) in a walkway on the balcony level. But I was assured it was a thoroughfare to the main speaking venues and would get a lot of traffic. It wasn’t a hard-sell. I think I saw EVERYONE. Over two days I opened and closed VoxBox over 200 times to podcasters, radio producers, sound engineers, media students and, for five exciting minutes, to Lewis Goodall of The News Agents. (And as a sincere fan of that podcast that was great fun, especially when he declared really loudly to his producer, “Tom, this EXACTLY what we need when we travel…!”)

The Podcast Show taught me a few things about VoxBox (see below) and one thing about myself. I really like selling. I remembered my training, imparted by the genius David Solomon of Sun And Moon Training: “ask open questions.” I soon landed on, “Excuse me, can I ask you what you do?” It’s hard not to engage with that question and, whatever the answer, the follow-up naturally led to a demonstration of VoxBox.

And VoxBox never failed to deliver. I had brought the first factory-sample with me as the demo unit, and with some trepidation. Would it be as well made as the prototypes? It was rock solid. It was also great that the folding mechanism dispelled all scepticism that “this won’t take more than 30 seconds to show you” was absolutely true. When you get the hang of it, it’ll pop up in 12 seconds and down in 5 seconds. 

But most satisfying? It was getting the same reaction it always gets in a domestic environment. I was worried that the big hall and all those bodies would make the dampening effect of VoxBox less tangible. But everyone - even wary sound engineers - when they spoke into VoxBox did the “Wow”, with the occasional, “That’s amazing” and (from those sound engineers, after clicking their fingers and clapping their hands) “That’s very effective. That’s very, very effective.”

Because I’m at late-prototype/early-factory-sample stage, I didn’t actually have any units to sell but I did gain a lot of love and loads of sign-ups to our mailing list, ready for the KickStarter campaign. The experience proved to me that VoxBox works, that it’s priced right and people really like what they see, feel and experience. It was exciting. I can’t wait to get this product out into the market. 

Check out the Kickstarter pre-launch page HERE!