UKTI business opportunities cover all sectors, from the more well established and traditional - eg construction, engineering, manufacturing - to the highly creative and sometimes, frankly, glamorous. Take annaloucah for example.
Thanks to the advice they received from the British Jewellery and Giftware International who are working closely with UKTI Business Opportunities via the Trade Challenge Partner initiative, annaloucah was able to use our free business alerts service to check sales and contacts within the jewellery/giftware sectors.
In February, they attended Inhorgenta, one of Europe’s leading jewellery and watch trade shows. Part of a group of twelve designers – all showing GREAT British designs – they took the chance to increase their exposure to European markets with the help of UKTI.
Annaloucah was new to wholesale distribution and didn’t want to undertake a show of this scale on their own. In this respect, UKTI support was vital in ensuring the smooth participation and facilitating networking. The variety of the products on show meant that SMEs didn’t feel undermined by bigger brands. The show provided annaloucah with contacts (buyers and journalists) from Europe and the Middle East.London proved to give the most interesting opportunity yet by meeting the owners of Tomfoolery gallery looking for new pieces for their North London boutique.
They were on the look out for new designers to participate in their wedding showcase and took a great interest in annaloucah brand new ‘Tesselatte’ pieces. Delighted by their interest, annaloucah begun to explore some new pieces and so this opportunity provided the perfect showcase to develop the collection, as well as deciding to expand existing collections.
Annaloucah’s showcase with Tomfoolery took place during spring of this year and proved to be a very successful start to an ongoing business relationship.
Since then, the company has gone from strength to strength.
This proves that a business opportunity is not only about contact, sales and exposure, but it can provide inspiration to create new products, driven by demand.
UKTI Business Opportunities has free alerts dedicated to giftware and jewellery. We can help SMEs find export opportunities and – in conjunction with other UKTI services, we offer support in sales, events, marketing and market access.
To take advantage of this free service and be inspired like annaloucah did, just register at: https://www.ukti.gov.uk/uktihome/register.html , or to contact the team direct, email bizoppteam@ukti.gsi.gov.uk