{"id":10414,"date":"2015-11-11T16:33:46","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T21:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bds-suspension.v1gkatq8-liquidwebsites.com\/?p=10414"},"modified":"2020-09-17T09:56:20","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T14:56:20","slug":"the-road-to-sema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bds-suspension.com\/?p=10414","title":{"rendered":"The Road to SEMA"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It has been a busy couple months with the BDS team on the road weekly attending events from coast to coast, new\u00a0truck models rolling into\u00a0dealer lots that need kit development, and the\u00a0company continuing to grow\u00a0to keep up with production demands. Come October, the final month\u00a0leading up to the annual SEMA Show, the R&D team is busy getting into prep mode for the pinnacle event on our show\u00a0schedule each year. Between building displays to showcase new products, overhauling new vehicles with new suspension designs, bumpers, lighting, paint, and accessories to drive out and put on display and keeping up with the day-to-day operations the R&D team stays busy.\u00a0The marketing team keeps busy coordinating all the sponsored vehicles that will be on display, working on promotional materials, signage, organizing the booth, editing promotional videos and prepping the new catalogs to hand out. Its a company wide effort to keep the business running a full steam while up to 10 employees from various departments are out of the office working the booth.<\/p>\n

This year BDS teamed up with sister companies Zone Offroad and JKS Manufacturing in booth #30192 a 25×80′ monster of a booth in the south hall of the 2015 SEMA Show. The majority of our booth\u00a0was shipped out in advance, but new product displays, promotional items and vehicles need to find their way\u00a0out to Vegas. For the show this year the main attraction was\u00a0a brand new 2015 Chevy 2500HD Duramax that the R&D team prototyped a 3” coilover conversion system for along with custom prerunner bumpers, paint, lighting and other accessories. The bed was filled with new product displays and promotional items stored under\u00a0an\u00a0Extang tonneau cover. In tow we had the\u00a0JKS Adventure Edition JK, a bad ass Jeep built by our friends at Eastern Truck & Accessories. The drive out west is not stranger to me (Carter, the BDS marketing guy) I’ve made the trip out west several\u00a0times over the years, but this year I was lucky enough to bring the guy that originally got me into cars\/trucks along for the ride, me dad Charlie. The nearly 3000-mile road trip across country started on the east coast of Virginia as we towed\u00a0ETA’s Jeep up to BDS’s home offices in Michigan. From Michigan we hooked the Jeep up behind the\u00a0freshly built C\/O equipped Chevy 2500HD and started heading west\u00a0for\u00a0Vegas. Along the way we made a few stops, checked out the sights said hi to some old friends and stopped for 2 days in one of my favorite places, Moab, UT. I couldn’t bring myself to come so close to the red rock town and not put the rigs to the test. We put the JK through its paces out on Hell’s Revenge before grabbing the C\/O Chevy HD tow rig to head to Behind the Rocks for some sunset wheeling. The following morning we watched the sunrise from atop the Golden Spike\u00a0trail to check out\u00a0the\u00a0amazing views overlooking the town of Moab and Arches National Park.<\/p>\n

After 2 days of pressing our luck out on the trail with Jeep and tow\u00a0rig, we pulled back into town, loaded up and hit the highway for the last leg of our haul out to Vegas. We pulled into town Friday night and come Saturday we started the process of building the SEMA booth, getting\u00a0vehicles cleaned up and preparing for the amazingly chaotic week of SEMA that runs Tuesday-Friday after Halloween each year.<\/p>\n