The first A.One Expo.

A.One is a middle sized company from Western Ukraine. We are proud of our products and are working hard to find new perspectives for export.

For me, I was asking among experts about the reasons why companies take part in global or local trade fairs. When you work in the global economy, when everyone have webpage and email, it is easy to reach people through the internet - why do you need to be offline?

Anyway, I guess, as soon as Sial and Anuga exist - there is a reason, even if I do not get it 100%.

So, we decided to have our first expo stand. It was in Ukraine, Kyiv, UFExpo2019. We have been to international foreign trade fairs before, we have seen different types of stand. We decided to make the stand interesting, even though it was more expensive. There was a team of my colleagues, who took part in planning the event. Everybody did a good job and the stand was nice looking, attractive, representing our mood.

Ukraine is very young with trade fairs, including UFExpo. It was rather small, compared to international majors. People said that this year the fair was a bit smaller but more alive.
Our figures from the stand:
- received contacts: 97
- new export potential contacts: 6
- contacts for local sales 13
- existing clients: 5
Effective contacts share. %: 24,6
As for me, looks not very good. But, I cannot complain, this is our first time and we do not have an experience to compare with. The majority of people who came by were suppliers, not customers. We were definitely not ready for that. Sometimes, we missed potential client, because another supplier stopped by. Another two types of visitor, we were not prepared to were: "buyers" and "eaters". Buyers - people who wanted to actually purchase our product right from stand. Eaters - people, who came to the fair to eat.

Did we like it - yes. Our team was great, the stand was great. We got interesting talks. We got interesting response about our product. Organisers did their job well, stand builder was also good - thanks to them also.

Will we take part next year? - it depends. Looks like we have more interesting activities for the same budget. But it was definitely worth trying, now we know what to expect.

Serhiy Hrysyuk
CEO, A.One
Radyvylivmoloko LLC, Western Ukraine