This is an opportunity for 14 Walloon businesses to promote their products to 175,000 visitors and take a giant step towards export.
The figures speak for themselves, with 3,500 exhibitors spread over more than 20 hectares and 4,800 CEOs from 153 countries. CES is an "exceptional marketing showcase." This is particularly true given the importance of media coverage, stressed Benjamin Stevens, Co-Founder of Riiot Labs during the previous event. He certainly won't regret his participation, as his product Blue won a prestigious Innovation Award there. Pierre L'Hoest (EVS) said at the time that, "It is essential for a company targeting the international market to come into contact with its future distributors, clients and competitors at trade fairs such as CES".
Following the success of Walloon companies in 2017 and with a growing demand to take part in this fair, AWEX has decided to organise a joint stand, for the first time, in partnership with Digital Wallonia and the Twist and Infopôle TIC clusters. Initial attempts to organise this were made ten years ago, but only one company showed an interest, compared with 14 for the 2018 event. It should be noted that Wallonia is the only Belgian region to be represented at CES.
Guy Van Paesschen, Project Manager for North America and digital sector advisor at AWEX, has been seeking to create this shared stand for a long time and has noted a real demand since 2016. He also welcomes this desire by Walloon start-ups and SMEs, saying that, "14 businesses, that's not bad for the first time proportionally speaking, particularly as they need the organisers' agreement to take part. One of the criteria is to have an innovative product to present that is not yet available for sale."
Businesses seem enthusiastic about their participation, including Carmelo Zaccone of Skylane Optics, who does not have a spare minute". Régis Coli (OkiDo) also says he is pleased with AWEX's preparatory work, because as well as having the chance to be part of the joint stand, he has received training in pitching to a North American market that is "very different from what we are used to in Europe".
