47 Feature headquartered in New York , but they may live 300 miles away , they may not live anywhere near the office . This means that you can ’ t rely on the fact that your customers are going to be in the location where you ’ re doing the event .
“ To some extent , it ’ s a challenge for the sales team . To another extent , the hybrid model works really well in that you can aim at the local market , then open it up to a broader audience of remote workers by using an online option .”
The demand for supply Delivering an event abroad is full of pitfalls , but not having a connection with the local supplier
Dan Curtis
base is one that could cost organisers , as not having an adequate support team has been the death of many an event .
Events agency emc3 works in North America for many of its international events , in this region , the agency relies upon existing connections to help build up a supplier base . Curtis said : “ We will look for recommendations from our network before looking to work with someone we would interview , we would work with them offline before we go in front of clients with them . “ If we are working with a partner , who is going to be taking a big chunk of responsibility on a project , we would make sure that it wasn ’ t a remote
Andrew Dawson- Wills
situation and would have someone from our team on site .”
The theme of trust continues with other , further flung , regions also having suppliers selected through network connections . Curtis continued : “ When it comes to places like China or the Middle East , we have partners that we work with who we trust . For example , we did an event in Singapore for LinkedIn in 2017 , where we had to build a quite complicated stage set . We didn ’ t feel entirely comfortable with the local production partner being able to deliver it exactly , so we brought in some people from the Middle East who we worked with before .”
Smyle ’ s approach to partners in unfamiliar region is reliant to venue-partners , according to Dawson-Wills . Utilising hotel and venue preferred suppliers is a way to connect with new event partners from out outset .
He did , however , warn against taking a venue ’ s word as gospel , advising organisers to do their own research to ascertain the value a preferred suppliers may bring to an event . Dawson-Wills said : “ I think the key the key thing here is really understanding from the venue , their relationship with this preferred supplier , then having conversations with them and making sure that whatever their supply is checked over by a tech team .
“ You just got to be doubly careful about that trust , because sometimes the relationships have in house are not born out of quality or merit . They ’ re born out of the business decision .” CN
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