Deere & Company’s founding dates to 1836, “when John Deere invented one of the first steel plows that could till American Midwest prairie soil without clogging,” the Encyclopædia Britannica tells us.
Here is an almost 200-year-old company that has “witnessed five generations of Deere-family leadership” and “became the biggest American manufacturer of farm equipment in the late 20th century, and by the first quarter of the 21st century it was the largest agricultural machinery company in the world,” the Britannica pointed out.
Deere & Company’s backbone is built of hay balers, combines, harvesters, tractors and lawn mowers.
And yet, 23 years into the 21st Century, the CEO and chairman of John Deere delivered the keynote address at CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas.
If that seems like the time-space continuum had a major glitch, Deere CEO John May explained it to a reporter shortly before his keynote speech.
“Our goal is to make our customers more profitable, more productive, and help them do the jobs they do in a more sustainable way. To do that, we’re leveraging the most advanced technologies. CES has had a history of talking about how technology and innovation solves some of the biggest global problems we have, and that fits perfectly with agriculture and feeding the world.”
So, yes, the company famous for its bright green-and-yellow farm equipment is, indeed, capable of high-tech advances.
Plans are already drawn for the 2024 CES gathering, and the keynote speaker has been announced. Next year, the company is one that is found in the home, but it is from an industry that is as seemingly remote as agriculture.
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The keynoter is head of a cosmetics company.
Deere me.
Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of the L’Oreal Group, will give the keynote — the first time it has been delivered by the head of a beauty company. L’Oreal is no stranger to CES, however. It has been honored in the past as a nine-time honoree for CES Innovation Awards.
The keynote, said a CES spokesperson, “will demonstrate how the company’s ongoing technology transformation ensures that it remains prepared for a future of its business that is at once physical, digital and virtual.”
At this year’s CES, L’Oreal was recognized for the world’s first handheld computerized makeup applicator. It is, said a CES press release, a “motion-stabilizing device to assist those who have difficulty raising their arms due to limited mobility issues, people with limited grip strength, and anyone with limited wrist mobility who may find it difficult to get a comfortable angle when applying lipstick or mascara.”
The company estimates that worldwide, there are about 50 million people with the aforementioned difficulties.
The company was also recognized for the L’Oreal Brow Magic, a handheld device developed in partnership with a tech company that pioneered in printed, non-permanent tattoos. A company spokesman said the device uses “2,400 tiny nozzles and printing technology with up to 1,200 drops per inch (dpi) printing resolution” to “provide consumers with their most precise brow shape in seconds.”
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In the past, L’Oreal was recognized for a wearable that detected how much exposure the wearer had to ultra-violet rays.
Currently, the company is working on a skin-analysis tool that uses predictive artificial intelligence and “selfies” from a user’s skin to develop skincare suggestions.
So the back-to-back CES keynote choices may seem odd at first, but they just show that technology advancements are in more places than we might imagine.
From cornfield to cosmetic counter.
Lonnie Brown can be reached at LedgerDatabase@aol.com.
