A Bit About S2 Ep 1: Charging Forward - Airport Innovation with Parabit and ICON

In a recent episode of the podcast A Bit About, host Michelle Dawn Mooney engages with Dickson Kendrick from Parabit and Eric Benson from ICON to discuss their collaboration on a seating-based charging solution at Hamilton Airport. Eric emphasizes the importance of selecting the right partner for such projects, highlighting Parabit's expertise and product quality as key factors in their partnership. The conversation underscores the growing need for reliable charging solutions in airports to enhance passenger experience. Both companies are set to showcase their innovations at the upcoming ACI show in Toronto, aiming to improve airport amenities and passenger convenience.

Transcript:

Welcome to A Bit About, a podcast by Parabit Systems that examines innovation, trending technology, and critical concepts around safety and security, customer experience, and operational efficiency. Joined by leading practitioners and thought leaders, special guests provide fresh commentary and technical tradecraft to enlighten perspectives and provide actionable insight.

Hello, and welcome to A Bit About, a podcast brought to you by Parabit. I'm your host, Michelle Dawn Mooney. Today, we're diving into the future of passenger experience with a focus on charging forward literally through airport innovation. Joining me are Dickson Kendrick, business development from Parabit, and Eric Benson, business development manager from ICON. And together, we will explore how their collaboration is powering convenience, connectivity, and smarter design in airports around the world. So thank you so much for being with me today.

Thank you, Michelle. Thanks.

Looking forward to getting into the conversation. Maybe starting with you, Eric, can we have you give us a brief bio if you can please, so we can get to know you a little bit better before we kind of dive into this conversation?

Sure.

ICON, we are based out of Canada in Ontario, just outside of Toronto, with distribution right across North America. I personally have been in this furniture space for almost fifteen years. And we deal specifically with dealerships, large national accounts and large project business.

Perfect. And Dickson?

I'm business development with Parabit. I've been in the transportation technology space for some time.

With Parabit and airports and transit agencies, we focus mostly on kind of those customer experience enhancements, starting with device charging, and digital signage, key kiosk wayfinding.

My personal philosophy is I've always kind of worked towards what the passenger needs. So I've been very upfront with my partner agencies that, you know, I think this is the right technology for, you know, to enhance that passenger experience. So that kinda trickles through all the way.

Absolutely. So let's start here with Hamilton Airport. How did Parabit and ICON come together on this project, and why was the seating based charging solution so effective there?

Eric reached out to me. He'd been working with, his partners, up in the Hamilton airport, and I'll let him, you know, kind of explain that further. And, we started a conversation, built very quickly, very like minded. And, we went through some of the charging options, that would make a difference, to the passengers. So Eric really led this charge from the get go. So I'll let him, you know, speak to the origin of that.

We work with a number of GCs right across the country. This particular GC we've been working with for quite a while. I wouldn't say that yes is always the best answer, but we do answer the phone when they call and they do have some requests that may be outside of standard furniture supplier or manufacturer scope. But when I took a deeper dive with my team, I realized that there was a stop gap we could fill here.

We just had to find the right partner. And so it was more so of finding that connection with Parabit to fill that need. And, you know, they answered the bell. I didn't know much about the Parabit product when we had reached out, but I knew that from what I was looking at online that it was probably the right call.

I picked picked Dickson off their web page and and made that call, and it was kind of, you know, hands off from there when Parabit was able to take the reins.

We sent all the spec in through the GC to the architect. They were very impressed with the product and actually, you know, called them out as the standard for airports when it comes to charging. So it made it quite easy when we were able to just, fill all of those stop gaps for them and then find them the product that was going to work for the project.

Yeah. And Eric, I love how Dickson said, you you led the charge and I so badly wanted to ask, you know, pun intended or no, but perfect either way. But from your perspective, what made Parabit the right technology partner for this project?

So I would say it would be a combination of the quality of the product and the experience that they provide through that product. They had quite a few case studies on many other airports and transportation situations that they've solved. So when we brought that back as a solution to the client, it was a no brainer once they got to see what we had seen the exposure the overall product selection. And we went through, I think, maybe one or two different models till we finally settled on the one that was going to be the right solution.

So I want to talk about the relationship here because relationships are so important in the business world. So what defines a strong integrator manufacturer relationship? And then how did both teams support each other throughout the process?

Well, to me, it's very important to to build that relationship and that understanding.

Oftentimes you come across with a solution that's pushed upon somebody because you feel it's the right thing, but you really do have to kind of understand, from their perspective, putting yourself in their shoes.

You know, especially in Eric's case, was, much more familiar with the environment, at Hamilton Airport, you know, and Canadian business altogether.

From our perspective, we brought our wealth of experience in the airport environment for customer experience enhancements.

It really is honestly, it's an understanding what the other person needs and what will bring to that partnership.

I think it just comes down to you're always coming back to servicing the needs of the client, right? So directly or indirectly, we were able to take a look at the need, assess that. And again, I'm going to come back to my earlier question is, you're not saying yes to everything, but you're taking a look at it. You're willing to go that distance and find them a solution on a project of that scale. Although it's not a major, major airport, the GCs, the architects, the design firms, they have a lot on their plate. So when they can reach out to a trusted vendor or supplier manufacturer and know that they can leave that with us for an answer, whether it's, again, we can do this or we can't do this, I think it makes it that much easier. In our case, because we are good at our relationship building, this was kind of a no brainer for us to find the right partner in Parabit.

And speaking of making things easier, passenger access to power is a growing priority. And I can attest to this because I was just traveling and I'm looking around where are the chargers? Where are the seats with chargers if we can find one even better, right? So why does placement and durability matter so much in airports? And then how did you address those needs together?

We've had some experience in this case, you know, and it was not just Parabit and ICON. It was Hamilton Airport. It was the GC.

We all worked together. In this case, Hamilton was redesigning, redeveloping a terminal to welcome Porter Airlines and additional flights across Canada.

So, you know, really charging comes down to this. And I find this, I find it more difficult to find charging on the transit side, which I also work in that industry.

But in airports, you know, we've asked the passengers to do everything on their phone, you know, buy their tickets, plan their trips, get their boarding passes, even order food. And that device needs power.

And so many times you find people huddled along the wall or around a pillar sitting on the floor trying to find some place to plug in. So it is really important to be able to provide reliable access to power so that they can, you know, keep their devices charged. And a lot of airlines don't even, you know, in a lot of airplanes, you don't find power there. So oftentimes your last chance to get a really good charge is in that terminal waiting for your flight.

So again, it really is an enhancement to the passenger's journey. It takes a lot of that kind of angst out of them, when they know that the device that they depend on will stay powered.

Yeah, I think that being able to integrate the Parabit product with the terminal seating product as well was key.

This particular project was only at a certain phase. They do have more phases to go. So being able to give that temporary solution with a permanent product that can be grown upon, it can be repurposed should they expand the size of that terminal or shrink it. It's not locked in place for life and integrate that with different furniture solutions. That was really key as well. So I can see that this fills the immediate need, but it will definitely be expanded upon utilizing more of the two solutions together.

So I want to ask a follow-up to that. When airports are planning new tech upgrades, what should they then be looking for in partners and products to ensure long term success with everything that was just mentioned here?

Well, think it comes to reliability and experience. I also think that the manufacturing and the availability of these products should come into mind.

Our products are all designed, shipped, built and supported out of Long Island, New York.

We do carry Buy America certification, which helps in kind of the federal, state or local funding. There's typically requirements as far as that.

But in so far as how the airport should plan, number one, all of our chargers simply require just standard power.

So it's very important that, you know, they are able to wire plugs or wire the terminals so that they can take these beyond just the walls and the pillars.

It's helpful if they're doing that as part of their redevelopment.

But we also, you know, we have CAD drawings available and we share those with general contact tractors, design and engineering so that they can literally take our products and work those into those designs at the very beginning. So it's not an afterthought. So it really is important, I think, to have those conversations early on, try to ascertain those needs, and then make recommendations as to, you know, when they're planning out their seating, when they're planning out their podiums and their desks and their passenger areas, that they have space for specifically air exceeding, but also parabits those enhancements, whether they be device charging or signage or whatever.

Yeah, I'll piggyback that for sure. Early on, you really can't involve us soon enough, especially when you want to see, touch and experience the product before going live. You're going to call out a whole bunch of different things that don't even come to mind when you're looking at a cut sheet or a spec sheet. So getting individuals like Dickson and myself or our design teams involved, we can point out some of those issues that we've experienced in the past and remedy them before they become a problem.

And then from a product standpoint, finding products that complement day two. So when you do need to grow, when you do need to expand, do those products lend themselves to that adaptability? So early on and day two are kind of big things for us. The product itself, like I said before about Parabit, the quality is there.

Icon provides the quality. That's not an issue. It's just finding that right fit and giving yourself enough time to do it.

You have a big event coming up, the ACI show in Toronto. So what will Parabit and ICON be showcasing there? And then what trends would you say you're seeing in airport design?

Well, from my perspective and and, you know, airports have, for the last decade or so really have tried to focus on the experience. You know, and now that you're no longer walking into an airport, hopping on a plane twenty minutes later, most passengers spend a couple of hours. So airports have made a big push towards better restaurants, better shops, more comfortable seating, better amenities.

And that bodes very well into what both ICON and Parabit do is we try to make that time that you have in that terminal comfortable, accessible.

A lot of our device charging, our seat backs and charging tables, have, ADA compliant, level charging or tabletops.

So it really is about making everybody, you know, as comfortable as possible, but also as accessible as possible. So as far as ACI is concerned, it is the biggest annual, conference by attendance of airports across the world, not just North America. And this annual conference, you'll see everything. So it really is important to kind of stand out, have those conversations, make those connections, really understand what they need and what they don't know they need yet, but come to that realization, oh, maybe that is something I should start thinking about now.

And how will that affect our passengers?

I can definitely answer that question a little bit easier than Dickson's explanation. I've got some overlapping travel this year, so I'll be there, physical presence, but we won't have a an actual booth at the space this year.

Gotcha. Okay. Well, wrapping up here because we're running out of time. I know there's so much to talk about here in this space, but we do have to let you go. But I wanna ask you before we do that, looking at the future of airport charging and passenger amenities because, you know, we've heard about the importance, and we all know if you're a traveler, you know the importance of being able to plug in. So how do you envision the Parabit Icon partnership evolving to meet all of those needs?

I can answer the first year. I would say just allowing those individuals in that space knowing who we are.

I always like to explain that we are controlled growth. We're not necessarily for every single project, but when you get to know us and understand what we have to offer, it usually leads to a really seamless project and product integration. And I think partnering with someone like Parabit makes it all that easier.

And I will kind of mirror that a little bit. The partnership with Icon is very important to us as well, because they offer a quality product, they offer that comfortable seating and those, furniture amenities that really is the importance. We kind of look at us as we're enhancing that.

But insofar as the future is concerned, you're finding more wireless charging. A lot of our chargers do have the Qi charging disks, which allow you to just lay your phone on top of it, which most people have at home.

It keeps people from losing cables, interactive signs, kind of more information, more tailored information, which we have on a lot of our kiosks and digital signage. But it really, you know, the other thing is how it works together. And, you know, seeing the ICON seating at Hamilton Airport terminal alongside our device charging, they meld very well together. It doesn't look like one is out of place or the other. So it really does bring that comfort and those needed amenities to the passenger.

Dickson Kendrick, business development at Parabit, and Eric Benson, business development manager at ICON. Thank you so much for being here. Important information you're going over for so many people as, you know, you're talking about, Eric, that you have overlapping travel. We're all doing it.

We all need our phones. And, you too with the partnership that the two companies are bringing together are making it a little easier for everybody. So thank you for your time. Thank you for being here today.

Thank you, Michelle, and thank you, Eric.

Thanks, Dickson.

So sweet. Nice little partnership there. Right? And I want to thank you for tuning in and listening to a bit about a podcast brought to you by Parabit.

If you would like to learn more about the conversation here today and Parabit itself, you can go to Parabit.com. I'm your host, Michelle Dawn Mooney. Thanks again for joining us. We hope to connect with you on another podcast soon.