Posted by
Barry Siskind
Community Manager
Last month the International Federation of Exhibition and Event Services (IFES) held their annual general meeting in Shanghai, China. IFES members addressed a concern near to the hearts of many organizers about exhibitors who are eager to exhibit internationally yet are sometime unaware of the business differences in various regions and cultures around the world.
Larry Kulchawik of 3D Exhibits, past president of IFES and an active member of the UFILive community presented a session titled, “Managing the Brand from one Country to the Next.” Larry’s presentation focused on the impact of show rules, regulations, labor, design and cultural expectation and the adjustments that need to be made when exhibiting the same product/message around the globe.
One of the conclusions is to bring the local suppliers of international exhibitors into the planning early. This approach helps eliminate surprises at the fair site and helps the exhibitor/client adapt better to the local selling environment.
Having suppliers partner locally seems such a logical solution it makes me wonder why it wasn’t an industry standard. Certainly some suppliers have done this in the past but now that the issue has been put in front of all IFES members perhaps more will adopt it.
From an organizer’s perspective, it begs the question, “What role should we take?” There has been much discussion about helping our attendee’s network through matchmaking programs. Perhaps there is a similar initiative that would help suppliers do the same.
Hello Mr Siskind,
Allow me to comment to your report on the Ifes meeting and Larry’s presentation!
As member of the board of directors and as international stand contractor since 33 years I dare to say that I am aware of the needs of our industry.
The internationalisation is a fact and the medium exhibition is an excellent tool to develop business in the home market and abroad.
The main challenge however is that we have to keep the participation of the exhibitor and the visitor affordable !!
How do we do this ?
I am very glad that Ufi and Ifes can share ideas arround this subject and it can certainly stimulate the standarisation of eventual solutions.
On the other hand : the industry did not wait for Ufi and Ifes to come up with an international platform to facilitate the international collaboration between professionals and between exhibitors and professionals : http://www.expopedia.com !
The idea is very simple : Expopedia is a search engine where professional exhibition and event service suppliers register arround venues. They are ranked according to the distance to the venue which guarantuees the searcher to find a local supplier.
Ifes has an agreement with Expopedia and since a few weeks also M+A agreed to collaborate with Expopedia.
We have talked about Expopedia already with Vincent Gerard and the collaboration with Ifes was already mentioned in the Ufi newsletter from december 2009.
If you would want to know more about Expopedia we would be glad to come to Paris to inform you more extensively.
Sincerely
Koen Bogaert
Past president of Ifes
Chaimen of the Ifes committee strategy and planning
Managing director of Publiganda nv
PS
Expopedia is a privately owned company initiated by a group of profesionals out of the industry and as a shareholder I have helped to finance the Expopedia project.
Koen – we are always happy to talk to you and are open to all sorts of ideas. There are many ways in which we can enhance communication, transparency and efficiency in our industry through the tools that the Internet now offers us. This is a high priority for UFI and we’ll be pleased to consider any ideas. Feel free to contact me directly by e-mail on pw at ufi.org