CASE STUDY
Sign Africa and Africa Print Gauteng 2021 live at Emperors Palace The shutdown of the events industry, since 15 March 2020, has been devastating. It is painfully enforced on the fifteenth of each month as the National Disaster Management Act is now, quietly extended each month.
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s an industry we should be pushing hard for fifty per cent venue capacity, like restaurants, shopping centres, large and small retailers, casinos, etc. In the meantime, we need to work within the Covid limitations, at the time of our event this was 250 people at indoor events and 500 people at outdoor events. Business to business (B2B) events, in particular, are traditionally low risk events. They remain low risk during Covid times. The entry protocols that expo organisers had in place for their events pre-Covid is already efficient when it comes
18 Business Events Africa June 2021
to track and tracing. Enforcing masks, screening, social distancing and sanitiser is straight forward,” said Dyelan Copeland, Sign Africa expo organiser. Practical Publishing, the organisers of Sign Africa and Africa Print took the decision to do a smaller Covid-compliant, B2B event at Emperors Palace from 21-23 April 2021. The event had the necessary permissions from the SAPS and local authorities, and it was Covid compliant to keep visitors and exhibitors safe. Videos of the exhibitors were shared during the event on social media.
It was good to meet face-to-face and see actual product demonstrations. The cycle to turn leads into orders is different for each company, so although a value cannot be put on the economic impact of this expo yet, it would only be positive based on the feedback from the exhibitors who had the following to say: “On the whole it was a very successful three days,” said Bradley Bate, Alliance Machinery. “We probably had more than 150 qualified leads at the show and the potential of selling five to ten machines that we are negotiating at the moment, so
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