Following our attendance at the SPORTEC2023 exhibition, we took some time to reflect on our experiences both as individuals and as a team, in order to facilitate the continual improvement of our software and services! In Japanese, this concept is known as “kaizen” // 改善 — and it’s one of the main values that we follow in our initiatives surrounding Sunbears!
In order to identify what we’ve learnt, we interviewed our teammates to ask about their experiences during the exhibition! So let’s check out their answers!
1. Could you please share your personal thoughts and observations of the event?
Masatoshi san, CEO and co-founder of Sunbears, was present at the event and has shared his view with us.
Masatoshi san: This is our first trial to attend an exhibition for sports. I was thinking Cloud service needs more of the digital marketing analysis side but trainers and coaches prefer face-to-face. It is good to know the way to understand solutions by coaches and trainers. Our product concept — “skill practice planning software for university teams” — seems new to them. Personal S&C Management with sensor feedback is common now and more and more smartwatches or training machines makers have got an advantage to advice provided by collecting personal data. Skill training such as coordination (positioning) is a more complicated topic. Sunbears is the challenger of this field.
Masatoshi san continues: Visitors to SPORTEC seem to be more personal trainers than team trainers, our collaborator, Usui san, mentioned. Gym exercise machines, nutrition drinks, smartwatches, which we’ve seen a lot of during this exhibition, are fit for those visitors. In that sense, Sunbears is different from that point of view but we were lucky to be near the university booths [which are our audiences of focus for now].
Moving on, the members of our Marketing Team who’ve attended the exhibition have also shared their insights and experiences.
Chloe san: It was a completely new experience to take part in such a massive event. Even though we are beginners with a booth much smaller than most, we were able to share Sunbears’ vision with many people in those three days. It seems that for many in the industry, what’s more important than company size or how flashy something looks, is the intention behind and approachability of the product.
Amanda san: It was really exciting to learn how many people were interested in Sunbears and what it could do (keep track of player’s health, attendance, etc.). It was a great opportunity to learn about the actual market demands so that we could use it to improve / add in the future.
Yuge san: It was a great opportunity for me to participate in SPORTEC2023 as a member of Sunbears! I had an amazing three days with my team. Not only did it give us the opportunity to present Sunbears’ recent designs to the sports people and to take in suggestions from everyone, but it also gave us the chance to meet other great people in the sports world, from sports nutrition and sports health, to sports and fitness, I witnessed many perfect combinations of sports and technology!
I still remember every interaction with exhibitors and visitors alike, and I was thrilled to finally meet our collaborators face-to-face. I look forward to many more such opportunities!
2. Please share a short statement about the outlook and direction that you feel the sports industry is heading towards and how you feel Sunbears “fits in this picture”.
Masatoshi san: I would like to seek the best positioning and coordination for the team. For this goal, I would like to seek a more fun approach and feeling of the app, that our Sunbears users can benefit from, instead of the old type of management. I find our positioning to be unique in the sports scene.
The sports business is chasing a more professional business model, or personal care for sports performance, but we will seek “Sports x Tech x Education”.
Chloe san: The sports industry is huge, and it’s hard to say where it’s headed next. There is certainly a lot of buzz around artificial intelligence (AI) and how it can be used to optimize athlete training. However, there are both technical and financial hurdles for the average team to clear in order to implement AI into their operation. In that case, I think Sunbears can fit into that picture as a more approachable solution. We don’t use AI in our system yet, but as an alternative for smaller teams with limited resources, our various features for practice / training planning are a valuable tool.
Amanda san: It seems like more people are conscious of players’ health and thus want to keep track of their daily health data — some wanted features like analyzing player performance based on individual fitness data (e.g., running time, nutrition, blood pressure, mental stress etc.).
Sunbears has a strong focus on preventing player injury (keeps track of injury and drill intensity), thus I feel like it fits the demand of the coaching industry.
In the future, a variety of data could be linked to each individual to expand the possibility of Sunbears, not just in injury prevention but also to improve player performance.
Exhibiting at SPORTEC2023 has definitely been an insightful and challenging experience for us at Sunbears! And we’re proud to have come so far!
Thank you for checking out our blog update and thank you for visiting our page, and visiting us on the event days! Your collaboration is important to us and we hope to stay connected from here onwards as well!
