RBTE, the European retail solutions show, enjoyed its most successful event to date, with over 12,000 visitors descending on London's Olympia to visit RBTE and the co-located Retail Design Expo, with more than 1,500 visitors coming from overseas.
Visitors came to RBTE to see what the 350 innovative exhibitors had to offer and to take advantage of the free conference programme that featured retail business leaders including Catriona Marshall, CEO, Hobbycraft, Andrew Harrison, Deputy Group Chief Executive Officer, Dixons Carphone, Simon Belsham, Managing Director, Grocery Home Shopping, Tesco.com and Simon Roberts, Executive Vice President of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. and President of Boots. Every single conference session was jam packed with delegates keen to hear from the high profile retail speakers.
New features included the Eye on Innovation programme, where a committee of industry experts selected the very best innovations that RBTE exhibitors had to offer. The eCommerce Bootcamps made a welcome return to RBTE with retailers spilling out into the aisles to hear the expert advice on offer.
Both visitors and exhibitors have been singing the praises of RBTE: 'RBTE is a great place to come to see the latest developments in technology, to understand the way retail's going and the way technology can take retail. It's a great way of getting a lot of information in a short space of time.' John Boyle, Chief Operating Officer, Ann Summers
'RBTE is a really valuable opportunity for a company like John Lewis to be able to come and see all of the suppliers together in one place and actually get hands on with the technology and see what's available and what we can use in our stores.' Tim Linsell, IT Delivery Manager, John Lewis
'What's great about RBTE is literally the size of it. So pure scale and being able to see so many different suppliers, agencies, technology all in one place and actually be able to play with it, interact with the people
that know all about it and really start applying some of that back to our own business.' Doug Glenwright, Head of Transformation, TUI UK
"We have been delighted with the quality of the visitors to this year's Retail Business Technology Expo. At one point John Lewis, Tesco, Clarks and Swarovski were all present on our stand, at the same time." Peter Lumsden, Content & Communications Manager, Ergonomic Solutions
"It's clear to us that our participation needs to be where there's a good combination of senior retailers and senior tech vendors. For us, RBTE has become an essential conference and get together - the visitor numbers prove that. It's got great speakers, a very strong steering committee, good content and a great environment in which to network with people in the industry." Helen Slaven, MD, Planet Retail
The Champagne Bar sponsored by Dell and the Wifi and the Paypal Chill & Charge were constantly full of business meetings and networking activity.
Matt Bradley, Event Director of RBTE said, "Due to the phenomenal success of RBTE & the record rebook onsite and the clamour of interest from visiting suppliers to be part of next year's event, the floorplan for RBTE 2016 has grown by over 30% with some very exciting new features & developments in-store. As with this year's show we expect to be sold out well before the 2016 show, so I'd advise anyone looking to be part of RBTE 2016 to contact us immediately."
The dates for RBTE 2015 have been announced as March 9th & 10th.
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