It’s been a year and a half since any decent trade show was held anywhere in the world, leaving retailers short on new product ideas, and relying entirely on powerpoint presentations and zoom meetings to sort their product lineups.
Quietly, and secretly though, one Aussie distributor has pulled off a bit of of a coup.
In the Northern Suburbs of Sydney, in the Grand Ballroom of a luxury country club, Tempo put on a show all week for Australia’s biggest retailers.
EFTM got an peek behind the curtain, in what was the closest thing to a CES or Hong Kong Trade show we’ve seen in a very long while.
Tempo isn’t a brand you know, but you know their brands. They make, import or distribute some of the biggest brands in retail, from Aldi’s Bauhn TVs, Linsar, Phillips cables and accessories, Polaroid, Akai, Sharp, Metz and many more. No, not the biggest brands in Australia, but pop into places like Big W and you’ll see loads of their gear.
A showcase like this allows the buyers at our biggest retail chains to get hands on with products, discuss options for creating variations or branding of their own, and to secure products for their retail shelves for the year ahead.
Sure, you can send photos and discuss over Zoom – but what’s better than getting hands on.
We can’t go into the details of all the things we saw, but let me tell you there’s lots of audio gear coming, accessories for the biggest selling products in the market and new brands expanding into a wider product range.
It was genuinely amazing to see so many things in one place – easily the biggest such display I’ve seen in 18 months.
No doubt Tempo’s competitors have heard it happened, probably now scrambling to make their own showcase too.
Despite Covid-19, retail is booming, technology is more important than ever so expect loads of great value, price driven tech to invade the big retailers in the next 12 months folks!
