Ipex has ‘a significant role to play’ for printers gathering information and making buying decisions, organiser Informa stresses.
Ipex organiser Informa has described the decision by Xerox to withdraw from the 2014 running of the exhibition – the first at London’s Excel – as ‘a blow’, but maintains that its research indicates continuing enthusiasm for the event.
Xerox was set to be a major exhibitor, but Jeff Jacobson, president of Xerox Global Graphic Communications, revealed that it will not participate through a pre-Christmas blog. HP has already withdrawn from the 2014 event.
A statement from Informa read: ‘The findings of our own research…indicate that there is still a real appetite from European printers to engage with multiple digital suppliers in the exhibition environment.’
The event company was set to release its research (carried out by AMR International) via a white paper this month, but said that Xerox’s announcement had pre-empted this. The research is described as ‘fundamental to how Informa is shaping Ipex for 2014 and beyond’.
While Xerox’s Mr Jacobson said that the company was ‘re-evaluating how best to reach customers and prospects’, and that customers ‘wanted to connect with us in different ways, with regional and personal engagements’, Informa maintains that ‘international visitors still consider landmark industry events such as Ipex to be the most effective means of researching and evaluating new products and suppliers, and to be on a par with supplier sales visits for making purchasing decisions’.
Research respondents said that finding new suppliers is their second biggest challenge after technical problem solving. 42% of printer visitors attend Ipex to evaluate the newest ready-to-buy innovations, while exhibitions also rated significantly higher than any other platform for peer to peer networking, with 30% of visitors saying they visit exhibitions for this purpose.
The Informa statement went on: ‘On this basis, we believe that an event such as Ipex has a significant role to play in the research, information gathering and buying process for printers, making it a vital sales, promotion and customer engagement platform for suppliers targeting these buyers. We are confident that initiatives such as the Global Print Summit and hosted International Delegation Programme will further enhance Ipex’s thought leadership position among the buyer community.’
Informa said it would share its research findings with its stakeholders, and that it ‘hoped that these compelling insights may prompt some reconsideration’.
Xerox’s perspective on international trade shows does not yet extend to drupa however, nor to certain other events. Asked whether Xerox would not be participating at further international shows, Mr Jacobson responded: ‘We’re dedicating our resources to more global targeted customer facing events. That being said, there are international trade shows, such as Hunkeler, which we will attend due to its continuous feed focus – an important offering to our customers and the industry. It is also our intent, at the current time, to participate in drupa.’
