Banking on the success of its first IT expo-Digital Expo 2008, held in
Chennai in the month of May, distribution major Redington is all set to take
this expo to other regions. The disti has announced plans to conduct similar
expos in major cities in South India such as Coimbatore, Vijayawada and
Trivandrum in the next three months. “Redington's initiative, to become a
value-added distributor, was a major success and we drew huge crowds during the
expo in Chennai. It enabled our channel partners to do very good business. We
want to replicate the same across the country. Initially we will take the expo
to Coimbatore, Vijayawada and Trivandrum to capitalize on the tremendous
opportunities provided in terms of sales, branding and publicity,” informed
Sridevi TP, Marketing Manager, Redington India. As per the plan, theevent would
be conducted in Coimbatore from October 10 to 12, Vijayawada from November 21 to
23 and Trivandrum from December 19 to 21.
On the selection of these three cities, Sridevi said, “After the success of
the Chennai expo and based on the feedback we received, we plan to conduct this
event in the major industrial cities in South. So we selected Coimbatore, which
is the Manchester of South India; Vijayawada, the business capital of Andhra
Pradesh and Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala.” She also said that Redington
would undertake a comp-rehensive marketing effort to attract and ensure the
footfall of the decision-making audience.
“A highly integrated and focused marketing campaign, consisting of a
complete above the line and below the line marketing mix with special focus on
Internet marketing, has been designed to promote the event in and around the
event cities. The event is sure to attract 10,000 to 15,000 visitors over three
days in all these places,” she shared. The IT exhibition is aimed at providing a
cost effective platform for principals to promote their products and bolster
their relationship with channel partners. The expo will showcase computers,
components, peripherals, consumer electronics, software products, networking,
computer education, multimedia, and telecom and mobile communication. As a part
of its value addition exercise, Redington has planned to conduct a seminar for
the first time for the educational institutions. The purpose of the seminar is
to enable institutions to obtain complete knowledge on their IT implementations
under the name 'IT for Educational Institutions: Solutions & Strategies.' For
this reason it has joined hands with Cisco and HP. “Lots of educational
institutions face challenges in knowing their IT implementations and as a value
addition to our distribution, we will join hands with vendors and enable
institutions to obtain more knowledge on their implementation necessities,”
Sridevi averred.
A daylong session is scheduled to take place on September 13 in Chennai for
the IT expertise and decision makers of the educational institutions. “We wanted
to do more such programs and are interested in joining hands with other vendors
too. Since Cisco and HP opted for the sponsorship of the first event, we joined
hands with them and in future too we look forward to conducting more such
seminars in association with other vendors,” Sridevi informed.