A Visit to the 21st Expo Belize Marketplace
The twenty-first anniversary of the Expo Belize Market Place was a landmark event with a whopping one hundred and four companies utilizing one hundred and ninety booths. The figures are in, and over fourteen thousand persons were in attendance at the ITVET Compound over the two-day event, held over the weekend, which is significant less than in previous years. Aside from the many local food, drinks, games, great deals and big discounts, Expo 2017 saw the participation of the U.S. and Panamanian Embassies, the Inter American Development Bank and special business investors of the Belize American Chamber of Commerce in Florida. A News Five team attended the expo and captured the excitement, which we are now able to air because the volume of news this week.
Duane Moody
Duane Moody
“The Belize Expo Market Place is a fixture on the September Celebrations calendar of activities. The two-day event gives businesses an opportunity to showcase their products, goods and services, at rock bottom prices. This year, there is no shortage of phones and gadgets, entertainment and even food offered to the thousands of Belizeans who converge here at the ITVET Compound in Belize City.”
Pamela Baird
Pamela Baird, Participant
“It’s always fun as usual. I visited the Grace Booth, the number one booth at Expo Belize; Malher, the number one product on the Grace line and also CPBL. Those are my two number one here at Expo 2017. Every year I am here; I am here both days. I enjoy myself. I come for business, I come for pleasure, I come for fun. It’s all about expo 2017.”
Heavenly Tillett
Heavenly Tillett, Participant
“I decided to come out to the expo because every year it is a different experience and it is just meeting new people, doing new things, winning prizes; getting nice drinks…just having gun on a whole and making money at the same time.”
Duane Moody
“So taking advantage of the many offers that they have?”
Tesla Guity
Tesla Guity, Participant
“Definitely sir, the drinks the food, everything. We want everybody to come out and take a picture at our booth. Go on our page, like our page, post up the picture on our page and tag five of your friends. And you can win five hundred dollars.”
So we checked out the various deals and our first two stops were over at the B.T.L. and Smart booths where by midday on Saturday, hundreds of persons had already taken advantage of the great deals on phones, data packages and top ups. Here’s how Steven Yearwood and Justin Kuylen put it.
Justin Kuylen
Justin Kuylen, Marketing Officer, Smart
“We figured one of the main things that is attracting customers to our booth is the double and triple up. We are actually right in front of the get-credit here booth right now. We have double and triple up countrywide today and at the Smart booth. If 3G isn’t for you, if just call and texting isn’t for you, we also have 4G phones. We have the LG Optimus Zone 3 that’s as low as seventy-five dollars for the first fifty people who come here. And each of these phones, apart from it being major discounts, you also get free ten dollars credit, free seventy-five SMS and for the 4G phones, you get one gig of data free.”
Steven Yearwood
Steven Yearwood, Brands and Events Coordinator, B.T.L.
“At this year’s expo, it is all about the packages; the device packages. And when I say packages, I mean you get 4G LTE data, you get SMS bundles, you get your sims so when you walk out of the booth, you are ready to start to Whatsapp, you are ready to Facebook, you are ready to Instagram; you are read yo go send SMS to your friends and tell them I just joined the Digicell family; it is all about the packages. And today our packages started as low as ninety-nine dollars. So the Logic XL4 was ninety-nine dollars. So persons who came to our booth today—and I mean we sold hundreds of phones today—persons who came and picked up the Logic phone, they saved seventy-eight dollars on that purchase.”
From gadgets to clothing….since its inception seven years ago, the T-Shirt Factory has become a mainstay at the expo. From celebration shirts to personal designs it was all available at the booth, including rags and hats leading up to the Soca Jazz Festival on September twentieth.
Nikita Hohenkirk, Manager, T-Shirt Factory
“We got one more booth this year because every year everybody come and we got to get more things. So we have our promotion that we just started for our Christmas. If you spend fifty dollars, then you get a chance to go to Chicago. And then we have it going on until December sixteenth, which is the drawing date.”
Nikita Hohenkirk
Duane Moody
“Talk to us about the shirts. We know that people can get all different kinds of things, even personalized shirts.”
Nikita Hohenkirk
“Right now we are only taking orders for personalization. They won’t be done until after next week because next week is a short week. So you can come out here take the orders and pay for them and then you pick them up when they are ready. We have discounted shirts right now for today and tomorrow; after that it goes back to regular prices.”
Various shopping centers from downtown Albert Street were also featured at this year’s expo as well as major distributors for grocery items and beverages. One interesting booth focused on beauty care products.
Mohammed Raees, Sweet Belize Beauty
“We are focusing this year on natural hair care products and the product we are featuring today is called Shea Moisture and so we are one of the distributors here in Belize.”
Mohammed Raees
Duane Moody
“Aside from that I see that there are other products that you guys are also selling here.”
Mohammed Raees
“Absolutely, we have unprocessed natural human hair, weave. And we also have some other products, electrical appliances and so forth.”
Duane Moody
“Is there any offers that you guys are giving to persons when they come to your booth?”
Mohammed Raees
“Brother, we are giving this stuff away. We have twenty to twenty-five percent off here; electrical appliance is half price; we have some other products over there at half price. The hair, we are practically giving away…again twenty-five percent discount.”
….just some of the exciting highlights of Expo 2017. Duane Moody for News Five.
