Vinexpo Daily - Review Edition

Introducing a Revolutionary
New Buyers’ Networking Club
Vinexpo Explorer brings top 100 buyers together at inaugural
Austrian event
Vinexpo is making further
strides to differentiate itself from
other international trade shows
by launching a new initiative,
Vinexpo Explorer.
The new initiative will bring
together the world’s Top 100 wine
and spirit buyers at key networking
events in emerging and trending
wine countries.
In a nutshell, the new initiative will
see Vinexpo identify who it sees
as being the most influential and
important wine and spirits buyers
across all the major export markets.
It will then invite them to attend twoday
Explorer events in key, up and
coming wines and spirits regions or
countries of the world.
The initiative is all part of the trade
show’s commitment to offer the
global wine and spirits industry
more than a bi-annual event
in Bordeaux, supported by
exhibitions in Hong Kong, Tokyo
and New York. Vinexpo Explorer
very much encapsulates its desire
to introduce measures designed to
bring producers and key buyers
together to help them work better
together and ultimately do business.
The first Vinexpo Explorer event will
take place in Austria on September
11-12 thanks to a new link up
with Austrian Wine.
But beforehand it has set itself quite
a task. Just who do you include
in such an illustrious list and do
you not risk putting some pretty
prominent noses out of joint by not
including them in your first Top 100
list? With so many key markets and
buyers to choose from, it is going
to be fascinating to see who makes
the final cut.
But Vinexpo’s chief executive,
Guillaume Deglise, believes this
new “revolutionary approach” is
needed to help bring buyers and
producers closer together.
It will take buyers from mixed
retail backgrounds and encourage
them to swap ideas, and share
experiences and insights. Be they
a Scandinavian monopoly,
a multinational hotel group, major
supermarket chain or restaurant
group. The final selection of
buyers will, he says, reflect
the “complexity” of the wine and
spirits trade.
“We want to create a community of
buyers and it is also a chance for
us to get to know our buyers better,”
said Deglise.
The list of 100 buyers will be
tweaked year from year to suit the
nature of the event being held.
The inaugural trip to Austria in
September, for example, will
be exclusively wine buyers to
work with the programme being
devised by Austrian Wine and its
managing director, Willi Klinger.
Klinger sees this first event being
an enormous opportunity to translate
growing interest in Austrian wines
in to hard sales over the coming
years. “It’s great exposure for
us and a chance to transport the
image of Austrian wine into sales,”
he said.
Klinger hopes the event will help its
three year strategy to grow Austria’s
global exports from around €150m
a year to nearer €200m.
The Vinexpo Explorer events
will be backed up by further
buyer networking opportunities
both at Vinexpo Bordeaux and
its sister events in Hong Kong,
Tokyo and New York.
The two-day Explorer events
are designed to give buyers the
chance to take part in one to one
meetings with producers and taste
special wines and spirits from the
host country not possible on any
normal trade visit.
They will also include business
workshops in which buyers will be
expected to work in small groups
with their fellow buyers to discuss
and analyse key trading issues for
the host country or region and then
feedback their conclusions to the
wider group.
Vinexpo will use its database
and knowledge of the global
buying scene to identify the top
100 buyers to invite.
Guillaume Deglise says it is too
early to say where future events
will be held but said it was an
ideal vehicle to take buyers to
explore the whisky distilleries of
Scotland or the wineries of Oregon
or Swartland in South Africa.
The key will be to offer buyers
“intimate contact with producers
from all over the world” •
Willi Klinger
Managing Director,
Austrian Wine
WE WANT TO CREATE A
COMMUNITY OF BUYERS AND IT IS
ALSO A CHANCE FOR US TO GET TO
KNOW OUR BUYERS BETTER
VINEXPO DAILY / REVIEW EDITION / FRIDAY 30 TH JUNE 5