The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Business Reporter
THE Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) Company will next month hold exhibitor training workshops as it seeks to ensure that exhibitors for this years’ event showcase their products in line with international trends.
ZITF Company marketing and public relations manager Miss Stella Nkomo said the two workshops will be held in Bulawayo and Harare on 2 and 9 March respectively.
This year’s 57th edition of the exhibition will run from 26 to 30 April, under the theme “Innovate, Industrialise, Integrate”.
“The objective of the training workshops is to make the latest and best exhibiting knowledge and practices accessible to every exhibitor, at the right time in the tradeshow execution cycle so that all exhibitors can experience the incredible results available from effective exhibiting.
“Although the training programmes are annual events, each year the agenda is tweaked to cover modern exhibition techniques as well as to address issues raised by exhibitors, business visitors and delegates at previous editions of the show,” she said.
Miss Nkomo said this year’s programme would seek to address issues such as effective pre-marketing, selecting and training the right people to man stands and practical aspects of exhibition participation before, during and after the showcase.
She added that the workshops were set to address issues of designing and executing an effective lead retrieval and conversion strategy to ensure that leads made at the show are followed up and converted to actual sales, utilising social and other new media to boost exhibition strategies.
“We urge all interested stakeholders to attend, even those who have been exhibiting for years, as this will be an insightful refresher course aimed at making their participation more productive and profitable,” said Miss Nkomo.
Meanwhile, Miss Nkomo said preparations for this year’s showcase were progressing well with bookings for exhibition space standing at four percent higher than it was last year at the same time.
At this time last year, 79 percent of the exhibition space had been taken against 83 percent, which has been achieved this year.
“The higher number of space rental figures are mostly attributable to an increased number of first time exhibitors this year showing that, in addition to our traditional participants, more industry players are seeing value from participation in the trade showcase.
“The show is set to have a varied and exciting exhibitor and product profile mix as participants seek to highlight how they are using inventive techniques to produce innovative products and services for the revitalisation of Zimbabwean industry,” Miss Nkomo said.
She said this year’s exhibition was likely going to witness a higher number of exhibitors in the solar and alternative energy sectors, from both local and foreign exhibitors.
