Food for thought

Dear John and Ex Com, let me start by congratulating you on your new presidential position. I’m sure you will meet the high standards set by the previous Presidents who all played a vital role to what the Group is today. Congratulations to the rest of the Ex Com who is constantly supporting us with their best effort. I’m personally very pleased with the new technology boost that the Group is receiving by the expertise that Jef Hufkens is providing. Thank you Jef for all the time spent and for making the Group look more updated. All of us in Cosmatos Group are very satisfied with what the Group has offered to our company over the last 10 years that we are members. Apart of the good times and fun we had the pleasure of having during all the conferences we attended, in China, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Turkey, Cyprus, we also must point out that the Group has added value to our business profile. Participating in the BB Antwerp for the last two years as a co-exhibitor in THLG booth, I must admit that the Group is giving us an extremely important opportunity that would have been difficult for us in Cosmatos Group to pursue on our own due to the high costs involved. So, once again thank you for all the good things that the Group has brought to our business. Reference your request for additional help from the members, it would only be fair to express our gratitude by giving a helping hand whenever this is needed, so by all means, please count on our help. Let us know what we can do. Over the last days and now that the exhibition’s “dust” is well settled down, I had the chance to review a few points and thought it would be good to share my thoughts with you. 1. The issue of professional administrative and PR support of THLG Having carefully listened to all the issues raised on this respect by Jos and Emre, I couldn’t agree more that the time has come to hire professional assistance. Right now, Greece suffers from high unemployment and there is a great deal of competent, skilled and well educated people that would perfectly fit the profile. What is of vital importance here is that a candidate from Greece would cost much cheaper to hire compared to other European wage levels. When it comes to geographical issues (i.e. if a candidate from a Northern European country would be more convenient), I trust that technology has given all the necessary solutions. Moreover, a great deal of low budget airlines are serving Greek airports, hence traveling shouldn’t be expensive at all. It would be very useful if the EX Com could advise whether a decision has been reached on this respect (i.e. are we hiring?) and if so, a full job description could be shared in order members to come back with proposals from their countries, if of interest. 2. THLG booth at BB Antwerp Needless to say how grateful we are to Marlies for her valuable assistance on this issue. Having participated on the booth for two years now, there are a few thoughts that we would like to share with you. I feel that the booth needs to be re-modeled in order to make better use of the space. The present set up is rather basic and maybe with a little bit of extra money per exhibitor, if necessary, we could have something much more contemporary and attractive. Since the specific set up is only rented I wouldn’t think that there would be a problem in renting something different next time. I feel that we should promote the fact that this is a Group and not just another exhibitor that offers services in one country. We could network within the booth. Why not share contacts? Why not taking the opportunity to introduce a visitor to a fellow exhibitor? During this exhibition we did that with Dynamic Shipping – even exchanged a few contacts that visited us by photographing business cards. My idea is of having a booth with much more open space instead of all the metal constructions that are practically everywhere leaving no space to move, or even to see each other within the booth. With the valuable help of Mariles who could show me the moves around these things now that she is also retiring, I would gladly supervise the preparation of a plan by a professional company who could re-model our booth and provide a cost evaluation. I suppose that any member who has a saying over this should come out and speak as we now have plenty of time to prepare our 2017 booth’s look and any opinion counts. To conclude, I would like to say once again that our participation in the Group is very important to us as it is provides add-on value. Let’s try to make even greater use of our networking. Thank you for your time and attention. Best Regards, Elisabeth Cosmatos Managing Director Cosmatos Group 5, Koleti Str. 54627 Thessaloniki, Greece. Phone: +30 2310 550950 ext.301 Fax: +30 2310 540435 Email: [email protected] Web: www.cosmatosgroup.com