Sourcing City Marketplace 2015 was unanimously acclaimed as the best yet by VIP visitors and suppliers alike. The combination of pre-booked appointments and meetings during the Runaround Sessions ensured that over 2000 focused conversations took place.

David Kershner of Impression Europe said; “We saw 35 companies over the 2 days and used the sessions to either review activity and sales YTD with key accounts or explore sales and growth potential with others. A pre-requisite for me in any working day is utilising my time productively with an emphasis on activity that will grow sales for both our customers and ourselves. The two days were perfect in this respect. The show is very well organised and a credit to everybody at Sourcing City who I know work extremely hard to make it so special.”

Visiting VIP, Jamie Marshall owner of Premier Print & Promotions said; “20 great meetings, lovely hotel, fabulous evening all with great characters/entrepreneurs from our fantastic industry, Sourcing City have again provided a great event, tell me another way you can discuss so much business with so many different partners in such a short space of time.”

Around 100 suppliers greeted the VIP guests as they arrived and the hall was soon buzzing with conversations focussed on how they could do business with each other. To ensure everyone had the ultimate experience, all food and drinks were free, from breakfast to lunch and afternoon cakes, for those too busy to leave their pods a regular ‘Roving Tea Trolley’ brought drinks and snacks. The free Pick N’ Mix proved as popular as ever, and as the sun arrived, so did the free Ice Cream Van. To ensure that everyone was relaxed, the Massage Angels were there to relieve any tension! As one VIP Visitor put it; “This is truly a Business Class experience, in fact I feel like royalty!”

Sourcing City Marketplace is now established and universally acclaimed as the industry’s premier VIP Networking Event. The two day trade event is exclusively for individually invited promotional merchandise industry VIP’s from professional distributors with a turnover in excess of £250k. Suppliers were able to meet with leading industry distributors who had a combined turnover of over £300m, knowing that everyone in the hall was a serious buyer of promotional merchandise.

Traditional exhibitions tend to focus purely on product, and some would consider that conversations have become repetitive for experienced exhibitors & visitors alike. Suppliers have a more important story to be told, as every supplier has services & processes that can help a distributor be more efficient & profitable, …but the distributors do not always know. The concept at SCM is that suppliers focus their conversations on a lot more than the small range of key products they have with them.

Many also attended the Purple Club Drinks Reception at the end of Day One, which was followed by the VIP Networking Dinner, where over 200 people from the industry’s largest distributors and host suppliers enjoyed a three course meal and plenty of wine. During the evening everyone took another opportunity to meet and network with new people, and to enhance relationships with people that they already knew.

Plans are now underway to ensure that the sixth SC Marketplace delivers even more in September 2016 at FIVE in Farnborough.

Published on: October 13th, 2015