DSE’s South American Road Trip Pays Off
August 6, 2015 by Dave Haynes
It looks like a partnership that saw Digital Signage Expo take its act to South America this summer paid off for Atlanta-based Exponation.
The company is reporting that Digital Signage Expo South America (DSE SA) attracted 3,800 unique visitors to the event last month, a number pretty much the same as what the mother ship show does annually in Las Vegas.
DSE SA was co-located with Serigrafia SIGN 2015 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which is the biggest show covering screen printing, visual communication, digital signage, textile and promotional material in the Americas. Serigrafia hosted 37,000 unique visitors, but the DSE SA attendees were registered and tallied separately.
The show organizers are suggesting the attendance numbers reinforce the argument that North American vendors need to take a hard look at budgeting for Sao Paulo, because of the ability to crack a market that currently sees just a selection of what end-users have access to in the US and Canada.
“In Latin America there is currently only a basic representation of the technology readily available in the U.S. market, which means that there is a huge opportunity for U.S. companies to do business here,” argues Jamie Garcia, Business Development Manager of dfi tech. “Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are the key markets for digital signage in the region and Sao Paulo is an active hub for all business throughout Latin America, which make it the perfect place to learn the culture, showcase cutting-edge digital signage technologies, and develop channel partners.”
DSE Show Director Andrea Varrone says the event was very well received, and backs that up by noting how 80% of the companies with booths this year have committed to space again next year. The 2016 event is in May, done in partnership with Brazilian trade show promoter BTS Informa.
It’s a big undertaking to get a trade show presence together – in budget, time and resources – no matter where it is held, or the vertical market it serves. There’s definitely opportunity in South America, but any company thinking about showing there needs to think not only about the logistics and cost, but how they’re going to service those many and different markets and two new languages.
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