Tips for a Successful Expo

Designing a stand and attending an expo takes an organised and creative team. After attending multiple expos with our Specialist Sports team, we understand the key ways to make our attendance at these as successful as possible. Read our tips to learn more:

Create an Engaging Stand Design

To attract customers to your stand, it should be engaging and align with your overall marketing goals. Highlighting key offers and promotions for example, is an easy way to draw customers onto your stand, if the offer is clear and easily visible.

Working with an event stand designer or a team who has knowledge in events and exhibitions might also help you to consider how you can make your stand work functionally. You might need a changing room if you are selling apparel, or a standing area available when there are high volumes of customers visiting.

Assemble the Right Team

The right team, with the right skills, will help make the running of your event smooth. You will need team members with a mixture of skills including product knowledge, customer service skills, and creativity (for capturing imagery and managing social media).

Prepare Your Teams

The team attending the expo weekend will not necessarily be involved with the planning and preparation required beforehand. In which case, communication about all aspects of the show is imperative to ensure all team members running it are well-prepared ahead of the event.

A document including logistics, roles and responsibilities, and product information will help your team understand everything they need to know about the event and your expectations of them.

A prep call or meeting is a great way to answer any questions your team members may have and ensure they’re absolutely clear about the expo ahead.

Meeting before the expo opens and finishes each day will give your team members the opportunity to raise any questions they have too.

Be Active on Social

Engaging your audience before, during, and after the event will remind attendees of your presence at the expo. Any offers or giveaways should be communicated to increase engagement as well as your event stand location so you’re easy to find.

Find an Innovative Payment Solution

It’s important to find the right payment solution which provides a seamless experience for your customers. We recommend using a mobile solution, which enables all team members to take payments from their own devices – meaning you don’t have a traditional till system where only one customer can be served at a time.

A cashless, dematerialised payment system makes payments quick and easy. You can send receipts direct to customer’s email addresses or mobiles, making the whole process paperless and quick.

Find out more about Square Payment Solution we use here.

Creating value from your attendance, whether that be capturing contacts, achieving revenue, or increasing awareness requires organisation and planning. Being prepared for any event will put you in the best position to be able to achieve your goals.

Learn more about our activation at The National Running Show here.

Specialist Sports on Sustainability

To remain competitive today, businesses across all industries need to integrate sustainability practices into their business strategies. Expectations on businesses have grown. The ‘knowing’ but not ‘doing’ is just not good enough anymore. Simply put, good intentions aren’t enough.

As a business, we understand the need to make changes and improvements in our approach to operate in a more sustainable environment.

Learn more about the steps we are making:

Cycle to Work Scheme

The Cycle to Work Scheme is a government-led initiative that gives employees the opportunity to save 25-39% on a bike of their choice to cycle to work. Not only does this benefit employees as it gives them a cost-saving opportunity, but it promotes a healthy lifestyle and reduces CO2 emissions too.

It’s a sustainable commuter option which, according to CycleScheme, saves 133,442 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year as workers swap their cars for bikes.

For more information, please visit www.cyclescheme.com

Electric Car Chargers & Electric Car Salary Sacrifice

We have a sustainable option for those who would prefer to travel by car, too. We’ve introduced the Electric Car Salary Sacrifice Scheme, to give employees the opportunity to make the move to electric. The salary sacrifice makes this more financially viable as employees pay for their EV lease directly through their earnings.

With electric car chargers installed on the premises, employees can easily recharge at work too. We understand that this isn’t always an option for everyone to do at home, so installing chargers on-site means everyone has an equal opportunity to benefit from the scheme.

For more information about the Salary Sacrifice Scheme, please visit www.wevee.uk/salary-sacrifice-car-scheme

Reusing Packaging Waste

Reducing packaging waste helps save money and the environment, which is why it is a key priority for our operations team. Plenty of cardboard boxes come into the warehouse and go back out to package orders. Instead of using fresh new boxes to package them, we reuse boxes that are still in good condition and able to re-send.

Our operations team is tasked to reuse packaging where possible, and this is observed by our operations management team. Alongside this, shipments are consolidated where possible and paper tape is used on all packages.

Energy-Efficient Lighting

To improve our lighting efficiency in our head offices, we installed PIR lighting sensors, which are motion-activated lights. Using motion-activated lights ensures lighting is only used when needed, enabling us to reduce the amount of energy used every day.

We understand making small changes can make a big difference, which is why we are always seeking new ways to make improvements and educate our team.

adidas on a More Sustainable Future

‘Through Sport we have the Power to Change Lives’

Sustainability is an integral part of adidas’ ‘Own The Game’ strategy which will guide adidas through to 2025. It focuses heavily on sustainability and pushing the boundaries by responding to challenges which endanger the planet and people.

By 2025, adidas aims for nine out of ten articles to be sustainable. This will be achieved by using recycled, renewable, and natural materials.

ADIDAS X PARLEY

On Earth Day in 2015, adidas announced its partnership with Parley for the Oceans [Parley]. Parley is an environmental organisation and global collaboration network addressing major threats to our planet. A new concept shoe made from reclaimed marine plastic waste was showcased at The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to illustrate their commitment to protecting the planet by conserving the oceans.

Fast forward to the present, and adidas has introduced Primeblue and Primegreen performance fabrics which are used to make many adidas products more sustainable.

Primeblue is a high-performance yarn made with 50% parley ocean plastic – upcycled waste intercepted on shorelines and coastal areas, preventing it from polluting our oceans.

Primegreen is made with a series of high-performance recycled materials which contains no virgin plastic.

In 2020, adidas produced more than 15 million pairs of shoes containing Parley Ocean Plastic (a material created from upcycled plastic waste that was intercepted from beaches and coastal communities before reaching the ocean) and are aiming for 17 million in 2021.

Both Primeblue and Primegreen will play a significant role in adidas’ goal to completely phase out the use of virgin plastics and polyesters in all products by 2024 and their aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

At adidas, our core belief is that through sport, we have the power to change lives. This becomes particularly relevant when we talk about the impact we have with our sustainability work. We are one of the very few companies that integrate sustainability into their business model, which become most visible in the fact that we take sustainability to the product level.

Kasper Rorsted, adidas CEO

For more information visit adidas.co.uk/sustainability

Working with brands who are focused on sustainability is important to Specialist Sports. Discover the steps we are making to help improve our sustainability here.

Adjusting to Flexible Working (the New Norm’)

Flexible working, including working from home and remote working, has become a large part of many people’s lives over the past year (and more!) due to the global pandemic. Some of the team here at Specialist Sports were familiar with flexible working but for others, it was a totally new concept.

For me personally, having been field-based in previous roles, I was accustomed to working remotely. However, I would usually have been in the field 3-4 days a week meeting customers or visiting the office. There is a really big difference when you’re forced to work from home full-time!

Over the past year, I’ve gathered some learnings and suggestions for how to work well remotely during a pandemic and beyond.

Staying Creative

We’ve all learned quite rapidly how to interact and work in the virtual world. No-one is unaccustomed to a virtual call or meeting anymore, as we may have been pre-February 2020. As a result, you might have found your calendars blocked to the brim with Teams or Zoom meetings, which creates endless lists of organised appointments. But what about those spontaneous conversations, like you have in the office at the coffee station? Sometimes those off-the-cuff meetings are the most productive or creative, as smaller topics can often be handled more productively. So when you’re in the office, don’t block out your diary with meetings. Find time to interact more casually with your work colleagues.

For longer meetings with multiple topics to be covered, a clear agenda is a great and simple way of providing more structure to save time on these calls. Just make sure you also leave time to be creative too.

Keeping Active

It’s important to get outdoors and stay active or encourage your team to do so. From training indoors to running at lunchtime, a step away from the desk can be all that’s needed to refresh your mind and help you work more effectively.

If you’ve found your motivation to get outdoors reduced though, you’re not alone. That’s why we (Specialist Sports) introduced our very own sports challenge to increase motivation and bring our team together, albeit we are sometimes so far apart physically.

Creating Boundaries

Your ‘home office’ might be a challenging environment, if you don’t have a separate room or space to work in. More often than not, you may need to use a dining room table, the corner of your living room or a make-shift desk!

Whatever space you use to work, just make sure you create a distinction between your office and home environment. This might mean spending 10 minutes before and after work to set up and break down your area. It could just change your mindset and create the clear boundary you need between your work and home life.

Aside from boundaries, it really is the little things which make all the difference. Did you know natural light and plants have a great impact on our mood? Setting up beside a window, or adding plants to your desk might be the small change which has great impact.

For me, I keep a photograph of my children on my desk at the office, so doing the same at home makes it feel more like my workspace.

Being Equipped

As lockdown eases, many of us are beginning to move between the office and home to work. It’s vital your home working space is fully equipped so you can work to the best of your abilities, as you would in the office. An extra screen, a suitable chair, a keyboard; these are just a few examples of what you should have access to at home if you need them. At Specialist Sports, we’re ensuring every employee has everything they need to function well at home, or remotely.

Remote or home-working is likely to continue to be a feature of all our lives for some time and many organisations will not return to how they operated pre-pandemic. Organisations need to adapt, as do employees. To be creative, share ideas effectively, and work productively as a team perhaps a combination of home-working and office working will become the new norm’ even as restrictions ease.

How Cycling Can Improve Your Mental & Physical Well-Being

Exercising has tremendous amounts of physical benefits, such as improving sleep, reducing the risk of heart disease, and lowering blood pressure. Not only does exercise help get you physically fitter but it can also help improve your mental health.

Read our reasons why cycling could be just the right exercise to improve on your mental & physical well-being.

“Cycling is an escape from our busy lives and a moment to take a breath.” James, Director.

1. Aerobic Exercise Reduces Stress

It’s been proven that aerobic exercise, like running and cycling, reduces feelings of anxiety and other symptoms of depression. Aerobic activity improves and stabilizes your mood, leading to a better night’s sleep which can also directly impact on your levels of stress.

2. Cycling is Low Impact

Cycling is low impact and less weight-bearing compared to other aerobic exercises like running, so you are less likely to suffer injuries. If you suffer from joint pain, for example, cycling would be a good choice of aerobic exercise to take part in. Lower impact exercise also makes cycling more appealing and accessible to more people.

3. It’s Environmentally Friendly

Commuting can be frustrating, especially during rush hour when the roads are busy. Busy traffic, parking difficulties, and money spent on petrol are all negatives which can be removed from your daily travel and replaced with cycling. Depending on the traffic and location, cycling can often be quicker than driving and much quicker if you tend to walk.

Cycling can not only be a faster method of transport, but it’s also an environmentally friendly one. Bicycles are nearly carbon-neutral, whereas cars produce tons of CO2 emissions each year.

4. Cycling Allows You to Explore

From the park down the road to long winding roads and climbing mountains, cycling encourages you to explore different areas across the world or right on your doorstep.

5. Improves Strength and Muscle Tone

Cycling can be a tough workout on the legs if you put the work in and train hard. So the more cycling you do, and the higher the intensity of your workouts, the stronger your legs will become. Alongside building muscular structure, cycling supports and improves your cardiovascular endurance and stamina leading to improved physical fitness.