Inside IWF 2026

In this episode, host Jacob Edmond breaks down his takeaways from IWF 2026 in Atlanta, covering the wave of software consolidation reshaping the millwork industry alongside a surprising surge of grassroots innovation happening at the same time. From the acquisitions reshaping Microvellum, EMOS, and Cabinet Vision to the rise of AI tools putting software development directly into shop owners hands, Jacob shares what he saw on the show floor, who is disrupting the market, and why this moment feels different from anything the industry has seen before. Whether you run a shop, specify software, or just want to know where millwork technology is headed next, this episode is packed with insight straight from the ground.

Where to Learn More

Grainwork: https://grainwork.io/

Phill Anton Consulting: https://www.phillanton.com/

Production Mirror: https://productionmirror.com/

Millwork Suite: https://www.millworksuite.com/

AWI National (2026 Annual Convention): https://awinet.org/mc-events/2026-awi-annual-convention/

CMA (Cabinet Makers Association): https://www.cabinetmakers.org/

IWF West: https://iwfwest.com/

Final Thoughts

IWF 2026 showed two trends unfolding side by side. The big software players are consolidating into a handful of dominant ecosystems, while individual shop owners and consultants are using AI to build their own solutions faster and cheaper than ever before. Jacob's biggest takeaway is that this tension, between roll ups at the top and grassroots innovation on the ground, is what will define where millwork technology goes next.

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what's interesting is as we're seeing these kind of roll-ups and the bigger players consolidating, it seems to be spurring innovation. And that's what's exciting to me. And, I think we're gonna have a lot of startups and people that, you know, start and fail, but out of that, you will have true innovation and it will, I think, long-term benefit the customers the best, Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Verify in Field. Today, I am diving into IWF 2026. I just got back from IWF in Atlanta last week. And here's the thing that stuck with me. The big software players are gobbling each other up. Microvellum, Emos, Cabinet Vision all now sit under three giants. There's kind of the big three of engineering software and creating vertical integration in their platforms. But at the same time, for the first time, I've seen more genuine innovation from small players and individual shop owners than I have in years. That tension and that kind of dichotomy and what's coming is what this whole episode is about. So I'm gonna give you my take on the show, the overall vibe, some products and software that caught my eye, and talk about really what's happening with what I consider democratization and kind of commoditization of software development. So last week, for me, for you, probably a couple weeks ago, IWF Atlanta was August 25th through 28th at Georgia World Congress Center. For those that don't know, probably not many of you guys, you guys are my listeners and everybody here in the millwork industry knows this is America's biggest woodworking show. Thousand plus exhibitors. And, this was the first year that I felt like it was like back since COVID, like really, really back. Every year it's been getting, bigger and bigger again. But it, it truly felt like fully there again. Tuesday, Wednesday were packed. Even Thursday and Friday we, saw a lot of people there. You know, Duckworks, we had a booth there in the BC Hall. It's where I spent the majority of my time. I did get to walk around, a little bit a couple of days and get a feel for the show. But, tons and tons and tons of people there so a lot of times there's, you know, some tire kickers, people looking to see what's out there, and just make sure they're not missing anything. But almost everybody I talked to was either buying software, buying machines, definitely learning new stuff. And it was busy. I saw loads and loads of people that I hadn't seen in years that I've worked with, that I'd met before. Met tons and tons of new people. It was, it was a good show. It was you know, I told my team as they came this is an opportunity to really see the industry as a whole under one roof, which doesn't really exist anywhere else. I think that it was just I mentioned it a couple times. I remember, you know, five, 10 years ago going into the show and the discussion even at that time, which felt like very archaic was, "Hey should we go nested base or stay solid point to point?" That was like the big debate and the big kind of topic. And now everything is AI. Everybody's using AI and robots. We're talking about the roll-ups of software and integration of platforms which, you know, just four or five years ago was like, felt like we were the industry, the redhead stepchild of the industry as far as software goes. We didn't get really any investment or attention. And we just kind of had what we had and we should be thankful for it. So, a lot of innovation, I think, definitely on the software side. Machinery has kind of continued to, to push as well. And it was exciting. Some products and software that caught my eye. So Production Mirror by OPREA, and Millwork Suite AI Estimating. There's a couple others I'll touch at the end as well that, Pacos by Phil Anton Consulting and Grainwork didn't have a booth, but they were attending. That's something that I see coming up. So, What's interesting is, even though we're seeing these kind of roll-ups and these big pushes from the, the big players, Hexagon Innergy, Cyncly, right? We're seeing kind of newer innovations and newer software coming out. So Production Mirror, Millwork Suite is an example of this. We've had Almoxi for a while that has really found a niche and built a very specific product that I think serves the customer base very well. And they've grown as well. They were next to us, next to Innergy as well. But some new players, Production Mirror. So I was a part of the CMA, Cabinet Makers Association. They did a shop tour. And as a part of that, we were able to see it in practice at a shop in Winder, Georgia. you know, it's impressive. You could tell, they had built it, purpose built initially and have kind of expanded it. Like it is a full having tracking machine centers, time tracking production management you know, basically a full-fledged ERP through production and MES. Millwork Suite as well, you know, it's been in development, they say for three years, built by a shop down in Florida to use an AI tool to read drawings, quickly estimate products, and then from there, put it in a format that you can import into Microvellum or EMOS or Cabinet Vision. But overall, what's interesting is as we're seeing these kind of roll-ups and the bigger players consolidating, it seems to be spurring innovation. And that's what's exciting to me. And, I think we're gonna have a lot of startups and people that, you know, start and fail, but out of that, you will have true innovation and it will, I think, long-term benefit the customers the best, right? So whether you get software from these startups or whether the big players adopt what, what's best from that, we've seen this play out time and time again from, you know, between Android and Apple, between Blackberry and iPhone and Android and between Autodesk and any of the other CAD players, you know, ultimately if somebody comes up with a feature or a tool set or something that customers generally love and works, it either succeeds or it gets acquired and, and, and adopted into kind of every other solution and becomes something that we have available to us. I touched on this a little bit, but, you know, the big story in the consolidation in software is what I'm calling the big three, right? We've got Innergy last year acquired Microvellum and already, you know, they're pretty much the go-to ERP in the market. There are other options already still players in the market with TradeSoft, with Production Pack and Shop Pack. You've got Crow's Nest you've got some other ones that are out there Global Shop and things like that. But really Innergy has been the ERP and now they have the CAD/CAM software, Microvellum. Years before that, Hexagon had already bought CabinetVision, they have AlphaCam. You know, they also have, are a huge construction software management company. They own Leica as well and have a ton of other things in their um, portfolio. But for our industry, it's largely CabinetVision and AlphaCam, right? And then now, announced Monday of IWF was Cyncly acquiring, bringing in Emos. So they already own Insight in 2020. They already own some other software that are more used in Europe, like 3CAD. Now they have Emos. And, what most people don't know is really behind the scenes Insight and had been using EMOS as a backend. Emos here in US was first known as Wood CAD/CAM and then partnered with HomeAg here in the US and HOMAG IX. But it's a standalone software that's been available for years in Europe and now is a part of the Cyncly platform. So still to be seen what that changes for users, how they decide to market it, integrate it. But you kind of have these, these big three companies that are rolling up and trying to create like a, a centralized ecosystem of CAD/CAM software you know production software, ERP software, and building an ecosystem that is kind of cradle to the grave for a lot of companies, as well as having solutions that kind of meet all the market needs with, you know, what's, what Cyncly has and Mozaik more for the residential smaller shop, now Emos, and then Insight 2020 and the other packages for more of the furniture maker standardized manufacturing. Obviously Innergy now with Microvellum and now pushing Innergy engineering trying to kind of offer a full portfolio of solutions regardless of what shop size you are. And Hexagon doing, not sure what exactly they're doing. But outside of that is now, you know, opportunity. You still have players like Swood and I think I've seen them growing a lot as people have uncertainty about these acquisitions. Like there's a certain subset of owners that are saying, "Hey, I'm not sure what's gonna happen with Cyncly and Hexagon and Innergy and I don't know that I wanna be tied into all that." So there are some people that are trying other solutions. And Swood is one of those that has grown. It is, similar to Microvellum and kind of Woodcad/Cam, how they overlay on AutoCAD, Swood overlays and integrates with SOLIDWORKS. And it has been, I've seen a lot of people adopting it specifically for highly custom stuff, and they might even pair it with using CabinetVision or Microvellum for their more standard things. But I've seen a lot more adoption of that. Also have seen a huge influx of Mozaik users. So, and I think what's interesting about that is what has been unique about Mozaik is the grassroots user base and kind of community that's been developed. So there's a huge amount of users on Facebook. There's some really great Facebook groups that, like, I can go post a question there and within 30 minutes I have a dozen responses and answers. That doesn't really exist for the other software yet. There is, you know, the Microvellum Forum that is open, and then CabinetVision has their own forums. There are some private forums that are out there that are developed, but Mozaik has an amazing user base, and they actually had some meetups at IWF, which was kind of user driven. And so I think that's what's driving a lot of that is in the roll up of the kind of the centralization of the Microvellums, the Cabinet Visions is kind of the, the big e- existing established solutions. You've got Mozaik, which is kind of like this newer, younger startup that, is not as fully featured as the others, but it is much simpler, lower barrier of entry, lower, upfront cost and a lot easier for the user to learn. It's a lot of residential shops, a lot of smaller shops that are using it, not maybe the complex, you know, high volume, more complex machinery shops. But for those users it has become very popular, and that is a large section of the market that is finding what they need there. Outside of software, you know, obviously there was all the big players. Stiles had as big a presence as ever and a lot of great machinery. You had the other big players, SCM, BSCU, everybody there. Almost everybody had, machinery and robots and, don't want to take away from, the non-software players out there. Overall, the show had a lot of, you know, interesting products. Ton of floor space to walk and cover. Hardware, material suppliers lots and lots of trade associations. AWI did their design tours there for architects, which was really exciting to see. And CMA had a presence there. Like I said, I did the CMA tour. But for me, the biggest takeaway was, overall that innovation is alive. I think the industry as a whole is busy and growing. IWF is gonna have IWF West next year in San Antonio, which is gonna be interesting to see how that is attended, especially with AWFS still in Vegas a month later, I think. But on the topic of innovation, you know, I think what's interesting is, like, there's players, like, I touched on Grainwork, by Myron Whitmer and, and the Cabinet Explorer team, you know, who has been a go-to cabinet vision expert guru consultant for years, but even with that, you know, he's found and, and kind of become disillusioned with really just the software still causes customers to be dependent on him to be dependent on a single person rather than having software working for them and being able to own it and customize it. And so he's taken a different approach and now with the advent of Claude code and AI and a lot of these tools, you know, is able to really spin up and build what is currently in beta a whole new software kind of from ground up different philosophy. So I'll share links to his, website in the show notes. If you haven't heard of it, go check it out and you can see kind of his journey as he's going through building this software and kind of his philosophy behind it. On the other end of the spectrum, we've got Phil Anton and Pacos, which he launched and was, presenting there. And that's a tool he's basically built and developed by himself. He is what I would call a, you know, a prodigy in his own right has been a, a Mozaik consultant and expert for, for years now working in that community. And through that has built a lot of tools and libraries and things, but this is a standalone application that allows customers to really build a storefront that can commoditize some products that they can sell as well as streamline the process for them to bring it into production. All of this kind of is just interesting because even though we're seeing this, you know, private equity VC-backed giants kind of gobbling up solutions, gobbling up companies and software on the, the other end of the spectrum, we're seeing this kind of democratization as I I mentioned and really just innovation coming as well. And what, five years ago would have been a bunch of us, you know, engineers talking and brainstorming, having ideas of just like, wouldn't it be cool if, and what if this, and why doesn't anybody do this? Now that can have, that can grow legs and we can take action on that. And largely because of Claude Code is what most everybody I'm seeing is using it. You know, there's other tools like Codex and, and the other tools, but all of that, you know, combined gives us like the access as well as a, a lower barrier of entry and cost and, and the ability to, to dive in and really build these ideas we have, test them, and roll them out and get feedback. Even further than that is I talk to, I can't tell you how many dozens of shop owners and, and entrepreneurs and people that have just self-coded solutions for themselves to really take ownership of the data that they already have and own that is just sitting there doing nothing for them. so this is something we're gonna be also doing a panel at as a part of the AWI technology task force that I chair. So, um, at AWI National, which is in October in Bonita Springs, Florida. If you're not a member of AWI, if you haven't gone to a conference, you don't have to be a member to attend, but I would definitely recommend coming to that if you're at all curious. But we're gonna have three different business owners, businesses that are sharing how they are using AI in practice in their businesses. And a, a big piece of it is, building kind of self-hosted dashboards and tools to pull that data together. So, you know, two of them use Innergy. They're pulling all their data and accessing it from Innergy, but building a separate tool to be able to combine that with their finance data, combine that with readings of their engineering output files and how they can, you know, first and foremost, like, view all their data in one place. And as well as do things with act on it. And so this is something that I think is the most powerful thing that AI and Cloudcode and these tools are giving us is just a couple years ago, you would have to hire developers, go through the process of like, okay, now I need to get a developer, I need to get a software company or I need to get somebody that helps me actually knows all the different layers of coding full stack to even be able to think about, hey, how can I build this, these tools? And that's why to date, really, you know, it's been, hey, let's go to an Innergy, let's go to a production coach, let's go pay an established software company to pull this data together. But now with AI, it's commoditized that to where I'm not gated from doing something with my data. I own a, it's all sitting on a server, it's sitting in my, my, you know, company-owned environments. I can go analyze years and years of shop drawings and engineering output to learn and build a tool to QC future output. I can go and analyze years and years of finance data and look at trends and see, hey, what kind of jobs are actually winners and losers? What clients are winners and losers? What do need to do better to make more of them a winner? I can schedule and forecast and really analyze data that tells me not just what I think our budget should be, but what it's actually been in years past. And so it's, it's really exciting to me to see the innovation that's coming out of this. And from this, people are actually sharing with each other. I met one individual who, he runs a shop with, with two guys and he's the whole front office and he's automated his whole process for doing, intake, estimating, shop drawings, 3D modeling out to production, all

Speaker 17:17

using AI within, a couple

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months of starting working with it. And so I think that obviously this is kind of like the wild, wild west right now, and there's definitely risk. I think in some ways it's kind of the new Excel in that every company even to date still kind of has people that have their own little side Excel sheets that is their dirty little secret of, "Hey, I'm not gonna use the company tools. I'm gonna build my own thing over here." And that, that is happening with AI for sure. But it is truly exciting to see how fast just in the last six months so many people have taken hold of these tools and said, "I now have a vehicle to take what's in my head, take this idea and actually build it and see and refine it and iterate on it to something that's useful and that serves the purposes that all I need. I don't need to build a tool that is a business that is software I can sell, but I can build something that works for me and my business and I don't need to wait on my software company to build it for me." That I think is what's truly powerful about AI right now is that in the past it was always, "Hey, you need to conform to the software or you need to pick a software that allows you to customize it to your needs." And really that was the pain point of ERP of, library-based software for CAD/CAM is I need to own it and I need to have somebody that's an expert on it and fully customizes it for us and maintains it just forever. And AI has allowed and commoditized that and streamlined that to where I can go and build just the tool that I need for my company. Even if my data lives in, if I have a CRM that has a database and I have a accounting software that's database, like I don't have to wait on them to build tools. I can pull all that together in one place. So we'll be diving into that more at AWI and also talking about a lot of the risks and kind of learnings from that of how to protect yourself and make sure you don't expose your data and, and, and there are some guardrails and things you need to know. But overall, a great show. Overall, innovation is alive in our industry more than ever. And there's big players in roll-ups and there's also still these, you know, upstart grassroots movements of people really building communities around ideas and around things that are shared shared pain points, shared, you know, experiences I think that is super exciting to see happening in our industry and outside of both in trade organizations and associations like AWI, like CMA, like KCMA, as well as just independent of that. People are really building real relationships with each other around the niches that they're working in across regions, Canada, US, across states. And so it's an exciting time to be in millwork an exciting time to be early career in millwork as well. A lot, a lot of new young shop owners you know, even though there's, we're seeing more and more private equity coming in and buying from retiring entrepreneurs and shop owners, I'm seeing younger, younger owners coming in that are just thinking differently, that are at their core a whole different mindset. And that in itself is also exciting to see. So if you never attended IWF, I would definitely recommend checking out IWF West. I think that's an exciting new innovation. Regular IWF will be two years out again. I will put in the show notes links to all these things we've talked about. And we'll see you on the next episode back with new guests and new interviews.