“We were pleased with the increase in African visitors to our stand this year which is a clear indication that Africa will be an important part of our plans going forward. The fact that the show is run in such professional manner has made it truly worth our while.” David Barendse, managing director of Hofmann Megaplan, explains: “Tyrexpo Africa’10 was a great success for Hofmann Megaplan, a contributing factor to the show I believe was that the show tied in with other tyre related events such as the launch of a new Firestone tyre we therefore started off with delegates from all over South Africa. We would like to keep supporting the event and we will definitely be attending the next show.” And Pieter Kruger, managing director of Tubestone, adds: “We are extremely happy to say that we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of visitors to our booth. We are also happy to report that 60% of our visitors were new leads for us to follow up. It also brought the visitors that are really interested in finding new suppliers to the show.” Dutch tyre distributor Bandenmarkt also reported increased sales at the exhibition. “Thank you for your excellent organisation of Tyrexpo Africa’10 in Johannesburg,” says Leen van’t Hof. “All three times that we have exhibited at Tyrexpo Africa in 2006, 2008 and 2010 were good for Bandenmarkt, with more sales achieved at each exhibition.” Arthur Birkin from Richards Bay Tyres confirmed “We enjoyed good success at our stand, we were positive and wanted this to work for us, we put a lot of work into it as a team and got a lot out of it. We believe that you need to get excited about your business and share this with the visitors coming to your stand. By doing this we had excellent success” “Tyrexpo Africa provided an excellent networking and marketing platform for Fleetaid,” says the company’s marketing and sales manager, Natalie Higgins. “As an electronic tyre inspection solution provider it was an important and highly relevant exhibition for us to attend.  We experienced great exposure and positive interest from the delegates and visitors.”  While exhibitors and delegates took a generally positive view of the event they were also highly critical of the attitude of many of the major tyre manufacturers, who chose not to exhibit. “It is enormously frustrating for us as organisers and is obviously disappointing to those that do invest time and money into the show,” says Rowena Suthers.