Dayna Patterson, Marketing Executive, is responsible for planning ITL’s busy exhibition calendar. Here we get an insight into ICE from an exhibitors perspective.

ICE is our biggest exhibition of the year and colleagues from our international offices travel to London to man the stand and meet their customers. The week starts on Sunday for me with the journey south to Excel, London to meet the stand builders and begin the set up.

Monday, the final set up day is my favourite part of the exhibition. It is always a very long day and the exhibition hall is freezing, but it is great to see all of the planning take shape and the stand come to life ready for a busy week. It is amazing to see how the exhibition hall changes from a building site to the glamour of the ICE show on Tuesday morning.

While we are completing the final set up all of my colleagues arrive into London ready for the show. Before the show starts, we always arrange a team meal on the Monday night at a local pub near our hotel in Greenwich. It is great to have the opportunity to socialise with my UK and international colleagues before the exhibition gets underway.

Usually ICE starts slowly on Tuesday morning as visitors travel across London to the Excel Exhibition Centre, but this year from the word go the stand was busy with visitors eager to see our latest products.

There was a real buzz at the stand as we launched a brand new product, SMART Coin System. Prior to the show we created a simple demo program to enable the unit to pay out coins all day at the show to demonstrate the units’ potential. It was great to see the SMART Coin System in action, attracting so much attention. As well as the new product launch ICE 2015 saw us display printing products from our subsidiary InnoPrint for the first time, making the stand our largest ever in terms of product offerings.

By day 3 (Thursday) I think I speak for all exhibitors when I say you are glad the finish line is in sight! I never sleep properly in hotels and the show is always a tiring week with long days and nights out (although it is great to catch up with colleagues and industry friends that I don’t see very often.)

The journey back home to Manchester took 5 and a half hours on Friday because of the bad traffic. I was glad to be back home for a rest and to sleep in my own bed after a tiring week.

Planning for ICE 2016 starts next week! 

... read more ITL Blogs at https://itlblog.wordpress.com/