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Bio-Rad is a global leader in life science research and clinical diagnostics, and a familiar face on the trade show and conference circuit. For years the team had relied on printed brochures and static displays to introduce visitors to their full product range at events — a format that made it hard to hold attention, hard to tailor the conversation to each visitor, and hard to follow up afterwards with anything more personal than a generic PDF.
Bio-Rad came to Wirebox wanting to replace the printed brochure altogether with something visitors could actually get hands-on with: a native iPad app their sales team could hand across the table, that felt as polished as the products themselves, and that turned every conversation into a personalised piece of takeaway collateral.
The Brief
- Build a native iPad app that showcases Bio-Rad’s full product catalogue at events
- Translate existing design files into an engaging, on-brand digital experience
- Let visitors browse by product category and flag the ones they’re interested in
- Generate a custom, personalised brochure built only from the products a visitor selected
- Bring key products to life with embedded video
- Feed enquiries captured on the app straight into Bio-Rad’s Marketo instance
- Deploy and configure the app across a fleet of iPads ready for events
- Support iPad 2, 3 and 4 running iOS 8
Our Solution
Wirebox converted Bio-Rad’s design files into a suite of 64 individual app pages, built from 5 flexible templates so every product category kept a consistent, on-brand look while giving the design room to flex across very different product lines. A slide-out pop-out navigation menu gave visitors and sales staff quick access to every section without breaking the flow of a conversation, and subtle animation was built into each page to make the app feel tactile and considered rather than a straight port of a brochure.
The centrepiece of the build was the app’s cart functionality. Borrowing an interaction model from ecommerce, visitors could browse the catalogue and add any page that caught their interest to a cart, with a quick-view summary and a clear indicator on every page showing whether it had already been added. At the end of a conversation, the app generated a bespoke PDF brochure built only from the pages that visitor had chosen — turning what used to be a one-size-fits-all leaflet into a personalised document built around that individual’s interests.
Key products were brought to life with embedded video, stored directly on the device rather than streamed, so playback stayed instant and reliable even on an unpredictable event wifi connection — triggered with a simple pop-up player on tap. Enquiry forms captured on the app were wired into Marketo, so leads generated on the show floor flowed straight into Bio-Rad’s existing marketing and sales pipeline rather than sitting in a notebook. Wirebox also handled the practical side of getting the app event-ready: setting up and configuring 16 iPads with the finished app, testing thoroughly across iPad 2 and above on iOS 8, and delivering the whole project within a 6–8 week build window backed by a 60-day warranty period — all overseen by a dedicated project manager with shared access to the project tracker throughout.
The Result
- A tactile, interactive alternative to printed brochures that consistently stood out on the show floor
- Sales conversations shaped around what each visitor actually cared about, rather than a fixed script
- A personalised PDF brochure generated for every visitor, built entirely from their own selections
- Enquiries flowing directly into Marketo, connecting the event floor to Bio-Rad’s existing marketing pipeline
- A consistent, on-brand experience delivered reliably across a fleet of 16 iPads
- Locally-stored video meant the app performed smoothly regardless of event wifi
