D – This year’s Welcome Home Tour 2024 kicked off at the bag specialists, Halfar in Bielefeld on December 5, amid a relaxed atmosphere. More than 100 visitors gathered at the premises of the hosts to examine next year’s bestsellers, trends and novelties of the ten Welcome Home organisers Daiber, Fare, Geiger-Notes, Halfar, Jung since 1828, koziol, mbw, Reflects/aditan, SND and uma. The exhibitors and the host, Armin Halfar, were already satisfied right after the first tour day got underway: “To our delight we received significantly more registrations than expected. Even after the official registration deadline, we received several enquiries from visitors, who are here today, so that we can really say we have a full house,” the managing partner of Halfar stated.
Unlike last year the Welcome Home Tour 2024 stopped off at selected company locations. Dominik Dell, Key Account Manager at Fare, said that this decision was among others taken because of the know-how and atmosphere the event series aims to convey: “Many distributors are already familiar with the locations of the suppliers, but something always changes over the years and of course it is much more exciting than an event location especially for customers, who are new to the industry.” Furthermore, Dell emphasised that the host companies go to great lengths to create a family-like environment.
This also includes factory tours that in the case of Halfar, were guided by the company founder, Armin Halfar, himself. He gave the visitors an insight into the founding of the company and all production steps of the bag production within an hour.
After the first stop in Bielefeld was already very successful, the tour continued with a well-attended stop in the Jochen-Schweizer Arena near Munich and the final leg of the tour at uma’s company premises in Fischerbach. Here, too, interested visitors were able to take a look behind the scenes and get to know the writing instruments specialist even better during guided tours. Not only were the latest printing techniques demonstrated, but the dealers were also provided with sales aids. “The Welcome Home Tour is a positive surprise every year. A personal, familiar environment with added value for us distributors, because we not only get a head start in terms of information, but are actually given practical know-how in the production facilities,” summarizes Boris Schwerdt, Managing Director of Global Brands Concepts.
From next year onwards, the concept of the Welcome Home Tour will be revised with additional dates in the following spring to take the pressure off the often crowded event calendar at the end of the year.
