PALME exhibitors acclaim show success

PALME exhibitors acclaim show success

Curtain falls on Mid East’s largest professional audio, lighting, entertainment and event management show with exhibitors in high spirits

Palme Middle East 2009, the premier exhibition for the region’s lighting, AV, systems integration and event management industry, closed today with exhibitors hailing the success of the show. In addition many exhibitors have confirmed that due to high quality of visitors that attended the show, they would be back for next year’s event.

“Many exhibitors, told us they were very impressed with the quality of visitors that attended the show, especially those from outside of the immediate region. Some participants had even reserved exhibition space for PALME 2010 by the second day,” said Alex Heuff, Show Director of PALME 2009.

“We’ve made every effort over the last 12 months to align visitor profiles with the appropriate vertical sectors of the exhibition. With a number of deals worth several million dollars already concluded onsite, we’ve clearly got that profiling right.”

The 7th annual PALME Middle East exhibition ran from Sunday April 26 to Tuesday 28 in Halls 5-8 at the Dubai International Exhibition Centre and covered 20,000 square metres of exhibition space showcasing more than 160 companies, representing more than 600 brands.

However it was just about the exhibitors, The feed-back from visitors to the show was that they had come to see what the new trends were and had not been disappointed either on the exhibition floor or during the series of conferences, many of which were oversubscribed.

One of the companies already booked for next year is audio equipment systems specialist APart, of Belgium. Kris Vermuyten, Sales and Marketing Manager, said the show had provided good systems integration contacts, which, as the company only worked through distributors or systems integrators, is exactly what he was looking for.

Creative Director at Lobo, Alexander Hennig , reported a record number of direct sales enquiries as well as other good contacts that he has made at the show.

“We were pleasantly surprised by the level of interest shown. We met people from all over the Middle East and as far afield as India and Italy,” said Henning.

Karl-Gustaf Kahlau, Export Sales Manager of the Swedish loud speaker system supplier, Renkus-Heinz, said the show had been “perfect” with regards to the number of customers and new prospects that had visited the stand.

“We closed a few deals, but most of our projects are long term, so it’s always important to make new contacts which this show has been very good at supplying. I’ve been here five times before and I’ll be exhibiting again next year,” he said.

Mindstec’s Qomo 105-inch interactive white board not only attracted substantial interest from the education sector, but also secured several sales. The company was particularly pleased with the number of visitors from beyond the UAE.

“We had a lot of enquiries from Saudi, which was very good as it’s a market we are looking to expand further in the coming year,” said Rajesh Nair, Business Development Manager, Mindstec.

Another company pleased with the amount of interest in its products and the quality of the visitors was electronic voting products supplier, Fleetwood. It is the company’s second participation at Palme and its Vice President of Sales and Marketing Electronics Division, Pat Moody, said the company would be back next year.

“When we came here about four year ago, there was not much awareness of our electronic voting products, used in game shows, AGMs, market research, conferences and surveys. But it was different this year,” said Moody.

“The traffic (visitors) to our stand was good and the quality of the visitors was very professional - we were dealing with qualified buyers and this year the market was much more aware of our products,” he added.