RBTE, the European retail solutions show, continues to impress all who attended, with 15,452 visitors descending on London's Olympia to visit RBTE, and the co-located Retail Design Expo and Retail Digital Signage Expo, with 2,156 visitors making the journey from overseas. There was a 28% increase in overall attendance compared to the 2015 show.
Tempted by more than 350 exhibitors of the latest retail solutions, visitors flocked to RBTE to see what innovations were on offer, enjoying cutting edge technology from the likes of HP, Samsung, Toshiba, Fujitsu, BT, Oracle and blue sky solutions showing the possible future of retail including robots, drones and droids!
In addition to the exhibition floor there were over 80 free conference sessions at 5 theatres. Speakers included:
- Angus Thirlwell, Co-founder and CEO of Hotel Chocolat
- Andrew Livingstone, CEO of Screwfix
- Tim Mason, Chairman of Eagle Eye and former Chief Executive of Bon Marche and Tesco US
- Terry Duddy Non-executive Director of Debenhams
- Oliver Meakin, Managing Director of Maplin
- Hayley Tatum, Executive Director, Senior Vice President- People and Stores for ASDA
In addition to the central conference there were two themed theatres; the Payments Theatre in partnership with Barclaycard and the eCommerce theatre sponsored by IBM Marketing Cloud.
New features for this year included the BT innovation trail selected by a committee of industry experts to showcase the very best innovations that RBTE exhibitors had to offer. Retailer Bootcamps made a welcome return to RBTE with retailers spilling out into the aisles to hear the expert advice on offer.
An exciting and fresh development for 2016 was the launch of Retail Digital Signage Expo – a dedicated new event located between Retail Design Expo and RBTE. Embracing the booming digital signage market, the show featured the entire range of suppliers, from screens and kiosks, to content management, AV, media players and networking solutions. In addition to the broad range of vendors, the topic was widely addressed in both the Retail Design Expo and RBTE conference programmes.
Both visitors and exhibitors have been singing the praises of RBTE:
"It's a really valuable event, it looks really exciting and I am looking forward to hearing a few more speakers and getting around all these nice stands" Terry Duddy, Non-executive Director, Debenhams
"Well done, feedback was consistent from visitors and exhibitors alike, it was a great show. You really do have an NRF for Europe now. One exhibitor told me he got 5 times more leads than last year. " Jevern Partridge, Consultant Director, Ridge Solutions Limited
"I visited the show on Thursday and had a great day, lots of innovation, new vendors to meet, catching up with existing vendors and bumping in to old colleagues. We had a great attendance from Asda and the feedback was the same from all the people I've spoken to."
Jamie Korda, Retail Enterprise Architect, ISD Strategy & Architecture, ASDA
"I am amazed by the size and the quality of this event and I really appreciate this matching together of the different domains like technology, retail design, digital signage, marketing and I think this kind of event is really contemporary"
Giovanni Flore, Freelance Designer Benetton
"The conference is good, the speaker programme is great, this is a big event, one we like attending."
Tim Mason, Chairman of Eagle Eye and formerly CEO of Bon Marche and Tesco US
"Very important, great networking opportunity, and I am amazed at the number of people that are here" David Wild, CEO, Dominoes Pizza
"Just the volume of different exhibitors is really impressive, if you look around you're going to find some real nuggets that are useful to take back to the business" Jamie Peach, Head of SEO for House of Fraser
In addition to the never ending list of speakers to listen to and the huge array of exhibitors visitors were treated to a range of hospitality options including the Champagne Bar sponsored by Dell, the Paypal Chill & Charge bar, and the K3 Retailer Lounge, all constantly full of business meetings and networking activity. Matt Bradley, Event Director of RBTE said, "This year's show has been phenomenal, the best ever! The sheer scale of this event now means that the only limits are the walls of Olympia. With the vast majority of exhibitors already confirming their stand for next year, RBTE continues to go from strength to strength. For anyone looking to be part of RBTE 2017 the best advice I can give is call us now as we will run out of space well before next year's event as happened this year!
The dates for RBTE 2016 have been announced as 8th - 9th May 2017 www.rbtexpo.com
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