How TZ Trade Shows is meeting Challenges Head-on

Introducing Grow Against the Flow founder Series

As part of the Grow Against the Flow series, we feature trade show founders and innovators to share their stories of growing their business in the face of pandemic pressures.

In this episode, we speak to Ekaterina Guryanova, owner of TZ Digital Trade show, and TZ Magazine. Interviewed by Dennis ILIN, Business Development Director at Ribbon US.

DI: Dear Ekaterina, you are in the Trade Show industry for more than 20 years, what is the situation now?

EG: Our company’s main market region is Russia and the CIS. On this market, as we observe now, COVID-19 forced organizers into the virtual event space. Actually, we were thinking about launching such events since the last year but we made a final decision only this Summer (2021). So, you can say, the Russian B2B exhibitions industry is experiencing what so many other local industries have: an acceleration of innovation driven by necessity.

DI: What changes did you observe?

EG: With consumer and business practices integrating both digital and in-person media for their business and personal information and shopping needs, it is inevitable the virtual medium will find some role in the B2B event space. Previous digital trade shows were driven more by education content and keeping up with industry trends rather than efforts to network and shop, but now the situation has radically changed, vendors started focusing on monetizing from their efforts in real-time.

DI: What conclusions have you made then?

EG: TZ decided to go digital. The reason we became Ribbon’s partner is that it offers tremendous opportunities to support a broad range of branding objectives. Much more, the events, which we plan, give exhibitors and sponsors the chance to capture leads.

DI: What are your plans for the future FTF trade shows?

EG: The nature of the two-dimensional digital medium makes it hard for exhibitors to engage with attendees for extended periods of time. So, to be honest, the FTF future is vague for me now. But, at least, Ribbon provides the brands a long-term post-show strategy in place on how they will nurture those leads following the event. This keeps our revenues growing.

DI: Thank you for your time.

Dennis Ilin is business development director at Ribbon and trade show veteran of over 20 years. To learn more about how your trade show can succeed, visit meetribbon.com/request-demo