Trade Mission to ITnT Vienna, Feb 5th-7th

MicroTrade hosted fourteen businesses in an all-island trade delegation to the recent  ITnT Trade Show in Vienna from February 5^th to 7th. The primary focus of the participating businesses was to identify new market opportunities and forge new business relationships, on both an all-island basis, and across Central Eastern Europe.

The micro-enterprises included companies from a wide range of sectors including digital media, wireless products, marketing specialists, IT compliance and Security products.

ITnT is the platform for information technology and telecommunication in the Central Eastern Europe and South Eastern Europe region and specialises in Software & Services, Infrastructure & Solutions, and Telecommunications & Solutions. Vienna is an ideal location for the event as it is the geographical cross-roads between Western & Central Europe, and the new Eastern EU states.

The visiting companies participated in an EU Matching event on February 5^th where they took part in 150 pre-arranged meetings with companies from over 20 countries. Initial feedback indicates that a number of working partnerships and significant sales will be generated over the coming year as a direct result of their involvement in the MicroTrade event. Astute Development Group, a Carlow provider of enterprise tele-services and global sales lead generation services were one of the participating companies. Their Business Development Manager, Thomas Dermody stated “I had multiple pre-arranged meetings with a range of companies and have already had advanced commercial discussions with a number of these prospective clients. It would have taken an enormous amount of time and effort to progress these accounts independently”

Breanndán Casey, project manager of MicroTrade “Each company had circa 10 pre-arranged meetings, based on their needs. These meetings were an ideal way for smaller companies to target the market, as normally, it would just take too much time & money for micro-enterprises to try to break into a new marketplace. The Trade Show also allowed companies to identify cross-border opportunities between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland, as a number of the delegates offer complementary services & products”.

The 15 companies in the delegation had previously attended a pre-mission seminar in Dublin on January the 23^rd, where they were informed on doing business in Central / Eastern Europe by Guenther Sucher (Austrian Trade Commission, Dublin), and on optimising Trade Show attendance and sales opportunities in an insightful presentation and Q&A session from Peter Lawless (3R Sales & Marketing).