Travelling for fairs amidst Covid-19
Generally everyone agrees on travelling as quite an experience. There’s a lot of new to enjoy, learn and share with others, regardless of where your travels take you.
This February, I travelled to Germany to attend the “Innatex”. An international fair for sustainable textiles. Complementarily, as chair of the Ethiopian Fashion Community (EFC), I represented the other EFC members.
When initially planning my trip, I was planning on visiting both the “Neonyt” and Innatex fair. However, with the escalating infection rate in covid19 cases, the Neonyt fair was cancelled. This was quite a disappointment because the EFC had invited several potential clients to this fair. In order not to completely miss out the opportunity to meet these clients, our agent and business consultants reached out to them inviting to the Innatex fair. They also arranged for in person meetings with some of them, especially since the two fairs were not taking place within the same vicinity.
Reach the goal with resilience
Despite all the inconveniences and last minute changes caused by the covid 19 restrictions, I finally made it to the Innatex fair! With support from our agents, we set up the EFC stand, which included products from the member companies; Enzi, Shimena and Kabana. Once the set up was done, I had to admit, I was proud of what I saw! It was very exciting seeing the outcome of all the planning and hard work the EFC team and all of our consultants put in.
Having the opportunity to engage with visitors and listen to what they had to say about our products was really awesome. They shared very encouraging and insightful feedback, which for me as CEO, Kabana and chair-EFC was priceless!
Besides being able to attend the fair and interacting with visitors, it was also very interesting to discover new trends on the German market. This definitely gave me ideas for our upcoming collection…So all left to say is, be on the look out!!!
