Why we attend conferences and trade exhibitions

Loadtec celebrates twenty years in the business at the end of next year (if you want an invite to our celebrations, best get in touch now!). Until a few years ago, Loadtec did not attend many industry events. We were happy to be known through advertising, word-of-mouth and customer recommendations.

So what has changed?

Brand awareness

For a long time, Loadtec put together solutions for the bulk fluid transfer market using products we sourced from the marketplace. Two years ago, we decided that to best meet our customers’ needs, we needed to take a step up and at the same time, we met a company who shared our dream to create the best bulk fluid transfer systems out there and Zip-Load was born. Now we need to ensure the industry knows the brand and understands the quality of the Zip-Load range of products.

Global market

It’s a cliche but with the advancement and frequency of air travel, plus the advent of social media, the world has suddenly got a lot smaller. And our market got bigger. Loadtec no longer just works in the UK; we work in Singapore, Russia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean… The world is our oyster and one way to meet potential clients is to go to the countries where they need our products and services and learn about how things work there.

Competition

Short of camping out in your competitor’s office (which we do not recommend), it is hard sometimes to know what products and services they are developing or marketing. A trade show is a great way to gauge your competition and how well (or not) they are thought of in the industry. We don’t recommend taking everything you hear as gospel but actually seeing what your competitors are doing and promoting, and keeping an ear out for industry news is always a good way to keep ahead in the market. It certainly happens to us with many of our competitors taking enormous interest in the wide range of solutions we show at trade fairs and on our website.

Networking

When I first started working in the industry, I always thought it was funny how people never seemed to leave the industry, they might leave a job but a few weeks/months later, it wasn’t surprising to see them representing a different company! You start to make good friends and connections in the industry and you never know what kind of business that will bring to your company.

Loadtec exhibited at the Tank Storage Association’s Conference & Exhibition 2015 on 15 October 2015 where we had a very successful show. Alec Keeler, their Managing Director, will be presenting at Tank Storage Germany in Hamburg on 25-26 November next and Angeline Radley, their Marketing Manager, will be attending the event.