SHENZHEN, China – May 10, 2016 – HWTrek (Hardware Trek), the global open innovation platform for hardware creation, announces the completion of its largest and most successful Asia Innovation Tour yet. The tour took place in Shenzhen and Beijing, China and offered hardware companies from across the globe an opportunity to become better acquainted with the ecosystem of manufacturers and suppliers in Asia. Asia Innovation Tour is an effort to bring traditional offline experiences to online and demonstrate the value of the hardware development ecosystem platform and community, while removing the barriers between hardware companies and manufacturing partners. Together, the HWTrek platform, unique programs and partnerships transform the way smart devices are made by rewiring the supply chain from Shenzhen to the rest of the world to help hardware companies overcome the challenges they face.
Josh Rasmussen, CEO of U.S.- based Bolt Motorbikes said, “one of my favorite things about visiting Beijing and Shenzhen on the Asian Innovation Tour was the access to a lot of thought leadership, in both manufacturing, PCB design, and entrepreneurship. That is one thing that is really hard to come by when you are stuck in an office for seven days a week. So, getting access to all those people from all around the world is absolutely invaluable in the growth projection that we have for our organization throughout the world.”
Selected participants join the tour from more than a dozen countries (Belgium, Canada, Estonia, Germany, India, Kenya, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States) and more than twenty cities (Austin, Barcelona, Berlin, Boston, Chatsworth, Cologne, Gurgaon, Liège, London, Nairobi, Perm, Pretoria, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore, Sunnyvale, Tartu, and Toronto). In addition, representatives of Sony, Autodesk, Autodesk China, and N15 participated in the tour.
The startups are alumni or are currently taking part in a variety of leading incubators or accelerators including BuildIt, Enchant, HARDWARE.co, Highway1, Make in LA, MIT Media Lab, N15, Orange Fab, Wearable World Labs, and Y Combinator. They are award-winning: Best of CES (Health & Fitness and Biggest Trends), BetaPitch Global, IBM SmartCamp, Oxford Entrepreneurs Tata Ideal Idol, Prototron Fund, The Queen’s Award for International Trade, African Entrepreneurship Award, Shark Tank, and many others. They’ve run very successful crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
In Shenzhen, the tour culminated in the HWTrek Meetup 2016. The meetup was attended by a standing room only crowd of 1,000 from the Shenzhen electronics manufacturing and supply chain ecosystem. The event featured presentations by Lucas Wang (CEO, HWTrek) and Jonathan Zhang (Manufacturing Industry Strategy Manager, Autodesk China), and an exclusive augmented reality demo from Asia Innovation Tour alum Raymond Lo (CTO and Co-founder, META Company), and demo pitches from the companies on the tour. Demo Alley allowed the Meetup attendees to connect directly with the tour participants. In addition, a further 2,500 experts from the manufacturing supply chain joined a live WeChat group session to follow along with the Meetup proceedings.
“I’ve launched multiple consumer electronics products in the market and I know how incredibly difficult it is to find the right manufacturers and suppliers here that are high quality and that meet the reliability standards,” stated Arun Buduri, Founder and Chief Product Officer of WatchRx. “I’ve been working with HWTrek for six months now—a fantastic experience so far to get connected to the right suppliers through the platform.”
In Shenzhen, the participants visited Defond Group, T&F Manufacturing, EMTEK, Huaqiang PCB, Kingbrother, BYD, Green Packaging Asia, and Honpe Prototyping. While in Beijing, they demoed at Foxconn Innoconn, met potential investors at 36Kr Incubator, and visited LKK Design, JD.com, and BOE Technology Group. The next tour will commence in autumn 2016.
About HWTrek (Hardware Trek)
HWTrek, based in Taiwan and Shenzhen, is a unique ecosystem where hardware Creators and industry Experts meet and create smart hardware for the future. HWTrek simplifies the hardware creation process by providing online planning and team collaboration tools and direct access to quality manufacturers and industry experts. Learn more about HWTrek: http://www.hwtrek.com or follow @HWTrek.
