Digital Meeting Place Medtech: Lucerne's Next Strike

Conteo founder Matthias Baldinger, T4M project manager Tanja Wendling, head of industrial fairs Messe Luzern René Ziswiler, exhibition manager IFAS Heinz Salzgeber (from left).

Swiss Medtech Expo is the Swiss meeting place for the medtech supply industry. IFAS is the trade fair for healthcare products. Now they are making common cause, initially online, and cooperating in the digital platform Medtech.plus. The two trade fairs will be integrated into the online network with Messe Stuttgart's Technology for Medical Devices (T4M-expo.de).

Medtech.plus is where medtech companies come together with suppliers and experts from the medtech supply industry. They form a year-round marketplace for medical industry content. Medtech.plus is the fifth digital marketplace under the initiative of Messe Luzern, following the "digital meeting places" Visit.am-expo.ch, Farming.plus, Visit.swissplastics-expo.ch and Memtec.plus. 
 

Initiate and maintain contacts digitally

The digital meeting points of Messe Luzern, developed in collaboration with the IT and content company Conteo, have a new focus. They are not a conventional online window of a trade fair, but the digital marketplace365, where trade fair visitors can find the content of the exhibitors - and not the trade fair - 365 days a year. Digitality makes it easier for them to prepare for the show and research the market all year round. 

Conteo founder Matthias Baldinger: "The goal of everything we do is for the right people to meet. To this end, we combine trade shows as the place where these meetings take place. If 50 visitors are interested in an exhibit at the trade show, there are bound to be 500 other interested people who aren't there." On Medtech.plus, organizers have also provided a networking tool. Exhibitors and visitors can make appointments in advance of the show or be found and contacted by other visitors.
 

"Here to do business"

René Ziswiler, Head of Industrial Fairs Messe Luzern: "We can see that our concept of a digital meeting place is working. It is a concept that brings partners, exhibitors and visitors together. The core is always content." The partner from the Swiss Medtech Association said at the Sept. 10, 2019, show, "Our startups are here to do business." 
 

Truth and fiction about digitization

What is Messe Stuttgart doing on the Medtech.plus platform, the "digital meeting place" of the SwissMedtech trade fair? On March 5, 2019, it had still announced a cooperation with the French provider for matchmaking - bringing together exhibitors and visitors - Advanced Business Events ABE. But the exercise has already been called off, as T4M Project Manager Tanja Wendling says: "The chemistry wasn't right." 

As in many other places, Stuttgart has experienced that truth and fiction on the subject of digitization are close together, but also far apart. All that glitters is not gold, or rather what is called digitization. In fact, we do not yet know of any successful model for a trade fair marketplace365 or a model for "social selling", the extension of trade fairs to 365 days a year with the support of exhibitor sales via social networks. Messe Luzern has not yet reached its goal either. But it is on the way.