Overseas buyers representing retailers with a total of around 180 stores in five different markets across Europe met with UK suppliers on 23 November in the latest ‘Meet the Buyers’ event organised by the Gardenex and PetQuip associations.
The retailers included pet product chains, garden centres with pet departments and country stores offering a wide range of garden and pet products. The event also featured a leading distributor of pet products from Slovakia.
All of the buyers praised the event format, the meeting sessions and the retail tour that was also part of the programme. Nearly 80 meetings were held with suppliers on the day and these brought the following enthusiastic reactions from the buyers.
Spanish garden centre: “We believe that we could potentially be doing business with four or five of the suppliers seen on the day”.
Czech pet retailer: “We identified at least three companies where we hope to do business, and also saw two other products of interest from other potential new suppliers from the UK during the retail tour.”
Portuguese and Spanish buyers: “We found the event particularly rewarding and useful and had very full meeting schedules. We normally have so little time to evaluate incoming emails from potential suppliers in our day to day business and it is impossible for us to visit and see such a broad spread of products and suppliers in such a condensed time. Therefore, the PetQuip ‘Meet the Buyers’ event provided a very focussed and time effective format.”
Dutch retailer: “We were participating in a PetQuip ‘Meet the Buyers’ event for the third time, and had the busiest day ever and look forward to receiving detailed quotes. We have also requested contact with a PetQuip member whose product we saw at some of the shops during the retail tour.”
Slovakian pet product distributor: “The event was extremely effective and comparable with three or four days spent at a trade show. We are interested in products from the majority of companies that we spoke to and now await detailed quotes. We wish that we had a proactive organisation like PetQuip in our country.”
Initial reaction from UK suppliers was also positive with Pet Rebellion saying that the events produced consistent results for the company during the three years it had attended, and this had helped the company grow across European markets.
Another supplier, Hownd, said that it chose to meet three out of the five available buyers and came away with interest from all of them. They added that the meetings provided a very cost effective way of seeing a number of buyers in one place.
PetQuip and Gardenex member company, Assured Products, said that the discussions had been fruitful and they expected them to lead to export orders.
Commenting on the continuing success of the buyer meetings, director general of the Federation that runs PetQuip and Gardenex, Amanda Sizer Barrett said: “Much of the continued success of these events is due to the meticulous planning carried out by the associations to identify buyers with a genuine interest in UK products and then matching them with British suppliers that can satisfy their requirements. The format ensures that serious sales negotiations can commence as soon as the two parties are introduced in the one-to-one meetings and the teams in our associations provide information and advice year-round to turn buyers’ interest into long term international sales.”
The next ‘Meet the Buyers’ events are scheduled for 23 February 2017 (pet sector) and 15 March 2017 (garden sector) and the associations are already in discussions with several international buyers who have expressed their intention to take part. Contact Gardenex and PetQuip to register your interest in attending.
