The Africa Print Expo held at Gallagher Convention Centre was a major success, with 5592 unique visitors from South Africa and international countries, 941 return visitors and 6533 total visits to the expo. Eighty two percent of visitors were owners or senior management and 79% are involved in decision making.
The top 10 countries with visitors from outside of South Africa included: Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, India and the United Kingdom. Visitors from other regions included: Angola, Cameroon, Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Seychelles, Tanzania and Uganda. This makes Africa Print the largest expo in Africa for the industry.
Visitors' top reasons for attending the expo included:
- Find out about the latest products available (78.16%).
- Update industry knowledge (48.8%).
- Make new contact or meet with existing contacts (35.06%).
- View equipment/technology (31.1%).
- Make a final decision about purchasing a product (28.74%).
- Plan to purchase technology (12.9%).
- Network with peers (7.1%).
Visitors got to discover 3D Printing, CorelDRAW workshops and were able to engage in the informative Daily Debate sessions.
Exhibitors were ecstatic about the amount and quality of visitors, as well as the equipment sold at the event, with many saying that the 2016 event has been the best show to date.
'This is the most amount of people I've ever seen at the expo. We interacted with people from around South Africa and from over the borders. The show was a great success,' said Phil Jones, Regma South Africa.
'This is the best show we've had in three years. The response from visitors has been amazing and we had serious buyers. We sold machines, consumables and software off the stand,' said Clinton Pillay, CMYK Industries.
’It is our first time here and as international company, I can already tell you that this is by far the best show we’ve ever exhibited at. We have had a lot of great leads and were very well received. We are also surprised by how busy it was on all three days. We think the expo team did a great job in organising this exhibition. We are glad to have been part of this epic show. We have also signed a deal with our new local distributors for our products,’ commented Chris Edwards, CWT.
’This is an awesome show and we are very impressed by the number and quality of visitors, we are on the GSW stand, the new distributor of EFI machines and we’ve already made sales of our machines that were seen at at the expo. We also received strong leads, the show is great for business and we will keep exhibiting,’ said James Mellor, EFI.
‘We’ve had a good show so far, considering that we’re international exhibitors. Visitors showed great interest in our products and the Battle competition,’ said Clément Mateu, Hexis.
‘We are a very new company and think we made the best decision by exhibiting at this expo as it is good exposure, plus we get to network with industry experts and reel in a lot of customers. We’ve generated a lot of leads,’ stated Michelle Mabille, EngravCut.
‘This is a great expo and is better than last year’s one. We have had a lot of customers and strong leads. The amount of visitors was also very consistent throughout the three days,’ said Rudi Bothma, Red Hand Sign Supplies.
Judges visited each stand at the expo and judged the stands according to criteria based on design, staff friendliness and professionalism. The stand winners and runners up included:
Small Shell Scheme:
First: Wired4Signs.
Runner up: Numbers CMYK.
Small Floor Space:
First: Optimus.
Runner up: Hitech Graphics.
Medium Floor Space:
First: Beswick Office Products.
Runner up: MIPS Technologies and RISO Africa.
Large Floor Space:
First: Nashua.
Runner up: Createx.
Mega Winner: Canon South Africa.
Runner up: Bytes Document Solutions.
The post show infographic will be available soon. For more information visit: www.africaprintexpo.com.
The 2017 expo will take place from 13-15 September at Gallagher Convention Centre.
