SIAL : the best place to conduct market research on food & drink trends

The worldwide largest food & drink fair will open next month (from Oct 19 until Oct 23rd). Some 6300 exhibitors from 103 countries (!) will attend the show and present what is thought to be the largest products range available on earth.

The fair is held every 2 years and we have the pleasure to have be press-accredited for 4 years.

Why is it important for us to visit the SIAL

We visit the SIAL for several reasons.

The first one is that we have customers in the retail and food & drinks sector and that we need to be aware of what’s new on the market. Many novelties will be presented in exclusivity on the fair, and there are so many exhibitors from so many countries that the range of innovation surpasses everything you can know. We will bring back samples and will usually present them to customers to enrich their offer and differentiate from the competitors.

The second reason is that the food & drink industry is representative of other sectors ; the percentage of SME’s and startups is high and meeting with them, discovering the innovative products they bring on the market, is always an enriching experience. The SIAL is also about entrepreneurship and discovering blockbusters or emerging trends before the others.

The third reason is for market research purposes. As some of you may know we are strong at helping entrepreneurs in the food sector (which belongs to the so-called “Horeca” sector in Belgium, “CHR” in France). Visiting the SIAL allows us to conduct competition analysis in a fraction of time. All companies specializing in one product are usually grouped together and we are able, in a few hours, to analyze completely a market offering.

Advice for your market research

Whatever the sector you want to go into, think about professional fairs as an opportunity to perform a competition analysis within a short timeframe.