Bobst switches to solo shows

Print, processing, and converting giant Bobst is implementing a new customer experience strategy, which will see it focus on its own competence centres and eschew the traditional industry trade shows.

The company says it is putting its new industry vision into practice with innovative ways to engage with customers and reduce the environmental impact, with smart factories, technology lounges and customer reference sites now the preferred engagement model with clients.

As part of the new strategy, Bobst is significantly reducing its presence at industry trade shows. Virtually all events are cancelled this year anyway, but Bobst will not attend drupa, Labelexpo, or other industry trade shows next year, although it will maintaining a limited participation in Asia.

Like many solutions developers, Bobst has been faced with a significantly increased number of industry events and tradeshows over the past decade and says at the same time the rapidly developing communication technologies offer new ways to share content. The Switzerland-based company is also committed to reducing its carbon footprint, which it says not going to trade shows will help with.

It says in order engage with its customers more effectively, it will evolve its current competence centres to the next level, providing all customers and prospects with new ways to access product and solution demonstrations. Over the past few years, the competence centres have been growing and the investments made are quite significant. Bobst says they become the preferred place to showcase live customer experiences and to validate investments.

This transformation will lead into new smart factories, which will encompass technology lounges, partnerships and application experts to demonstrate complete end-to-end solutions where customers will be able to touch and see everything required to produce a label, pouch or box. From substrates processing, to job preparation, colour management, printing, tool preparation, and converting, all with the option to test specific jobs from converters.

In addition, Bobst has to virtualise the customer experience with live streaming demonstrations – across all equipment in its existing competence centres, providing, it says, an engaging customer experience with less traveling constraints. Bobst will release further information on these new ways of engagement soon.