Wild weekends are pretty much the Anker way when it comes to expos. We hustle to get there. We hustle the whole time we’re there. We make friends. We leave friends. We are always so impressed by who we meet and what we learn from consumers.
The Southeast Adventure Vehicle Expo was a bit of an exception. We were NOT talking to regular consumers. Every single person there was aware of sogens and how they work. That was a first for me! So SAVE turned out to be a great way to learn how overlanders use generators to power their off-grid adventures and what they want next.
For everyone here, it’s the first look at the C800 plus, our newest release going into homes later this month. (Signup to get it first and for $150 off its $649 retail price here!) We’re still, of course, introducing the SOLIX F3800 to people, and it’s been a hit on its own, due to its flexibility as both a mobile and in-home, permanent power solution.
It makes sense Anker would enter this market and show off the portable power station goods here – these folks go out in the boonies for days at a time, and they like their morning coffee, we’ve noticed.
Styles of overlanding run the gamut from compact and towable to 12-feet tall and even taller. Like way taller! So many custom builds. (No joke, one guy’s rig was so big, the photographer we hired and I guessed he got less than 5 miles to the gallon. Later, I saw that same rig on a flatbed, being moved by a truck that probably got 10 miles to the gallon … I assume big rig guy was local!)
Regardless of the build, if we thought you had a social media presence, we asked you if you’d join our Adventurers Assembly, a new program offering power stations for testing, free gear packages and a chance to win $4,999 in cash to fund an overlanding adventure or even a build. (Read: Free money, free gear, free product, low entry hurdle.)
Anywhoodle, here are a few highlights in link form:
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Baptism Overland (aka Asia Samson) produced and directed this film and debuted it at SAVE, The Unknown 1200. The film crew, including John Birkmire promoter and organizer of The Florida Adventure Trail, hopes to create a SAVE Film Festival for next year. {We interviewed Asia at SAVE. Watch the short interview here.)
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We met Nick and Amanda of Outdoor Gear and Beer, who produced a film through Blackwaters Films of the Arctic,
[Blackwaters](https://vimeo.com/891452188). Not an overlanding trip, but it’s made even more rad because it’s a truly wild adventure illustrating how Black men get outdoors (and not to conquer) while modeling Black men supporting each other. (I am not crying! But I will be later. I love stories about learning to be resilient on your own terms.) -
We brought Shane and Emily from Arbour Season to the event. They shared their good spirits and sweet music for a small audience. (Among their riffs? A Michael Jackson remix and a Metallica remix. Not joking, also? It was actually reflective of their style without abandoning the original vibe.)
Will we set up more booths at overlanding expos? Maybe. We’ll do the math and see how it fits into the marketing budget of the future. In the meantime, SAVE Expo was fun and well run with a ton of vendors and microinfluencers who convinced us all we need to camp more and work less. Which is pretty much the dream of every overlander we met here.