Nathan Hight, Co-Founder and Director of Safe365
Exhibiting at Safety & Health Expo was a really successful initiative for Safe365. We’re a new brand entering the European market, so the purpose of the show for us was introducing the product to a large critical mass of buyers – or potential buyers. For us, it was less about trying to sell the product. It was more about trying to ascertain some feedback from the market about our product and whether a piece of health & safety technology which has been incredibly successful in New Zealand would be fit for purpose in the UK market.
The best thing about Safety & Health Expo is the environment, the range of other providers that we mixed and mingled with, and the breadth and diversity of the visitor mass. We spoke to businesses of all sizes – our focus was small to medium businesses – SME’s and such – and we spoke to visitors from many different industries, from health and safety professionals working inside large enterprises and across large industry verticals as well as a number of external health and safety advisors/consultants. One of the key success points for us was the fact that it’s a great way to engage in a new market. This has allowed us to complete some great market segmentation work on where operate and where we don’t so we can work with those buyers where we know there is a strong product:market fit
We got some really positive feedback from pretty much everyone we spoke to. The gap in the market for us is around our proposition as a genuine, one stop shop SaaS product for health, safety and wellbeing –particularly in the small and medium enterprise market. We’ve had SME focused SaaS technology products from New Zealand like Xero successfully enter the UK market and Safe365’s solution fills a similar gap in the health & safety aspect of business. Our product is out of the box and it doesn’t need implementation – much like easy cookbooks, any business can use it. It’s incredibly cost effective, intuitive and easy to use… that’s what we thought – and that was certainly verified in the feedback we received at Safety & Health Expo.
The show is significantly bigger and broader than what we have experienced – certainly in New Zealand or Australia. The footfall was really positive, we had three or four of us on the stand for most of the event, and at many times during the peak periods, we were all well and truly engaged, with a number of buyers and interested parties. We’re actually looking to bring another sales person next year to adequately deal with interest when the show gets a bit busier.
The thing that was most impressive was that, across the industry verticals, there was great representation, across manufacturing, consultancy, education, health, government, transport, utilities, retail – and it’s incredibly valuable for us to meet all of these industry verticals in one event.
Mark Kidd, Co-Founder of Safe365
We didn’t get a chance to explore the other co-located shows – the interest we had was too full on. We had a bit of a wander round the Safety & Health expo though which was pretty useful, and it was great for us to understand our competition and explore potential strategic partnerships. We came across a few of those and we’re still in touch with them about opportunities to help them enter the market in New Zealand and vice versa.
The purpose of the show this time around wasn’t just about trying to generate a number of leads, we were trying to understand the market. We’re in a go-to-market phase, which is more research based. Despite that, we did follow up with a number of parties the following week after the show and we are speaking to people who showed interest. We’ve subsequently employed a UK Sales Director who will give us a strong presence on the ground in the UK going forward which is a really exciting step for Safe365.
The hardest thing when you’re entering a market for the first time is trying to encourage those early adopters to have a crack and give you a go. It was an opportunity for us to meet a bunch of potential reference sites – they’re incredibly important.
It’s too soon to tell what our ROI is from exhibiting, just because of the age and stage we are at in our UK journey. What we were doing at the show was a bit different and unique. It’s a sales exercise for most exhibitors to get a direct ROI. But for us, it was about understanding the market and introducing Safe365 to the market with opportunities. In that sense, there was a great ROI.
Assess, improve & monitor your organisations health, safety & well-being capability, culture, performance and engagement. Safer workforce. Better business.
Safe365 generates aware, enabled and effective health, safety and well-being at work. Our cost effective software as a service product & smartphone app provides a suite of features that enable businesses of all sizes & industries to assess and understand their health and safety capability, culture & performance, the tools to continually improve and the visibility to monitor.
