The highlight of the year was the official launch of our partnership with the Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce, part of the World Trade Centre in Hull.
You can read the press release for the launch here.
Download Press_release_Nov_07.pdf
Addressing a packed Chamber event in Goole on 2nd November, Carolyn Burgess, our chief executive, invoked the spirit of the Chamber's founding fathers:
"In 1483, a group of intrepid businessmen, know in those days as 'Merchant Adventurers', set sail from the City of Hull to sell cloth to traders in far-away lands. Their journey was a perilous one, but overcoming storms, scurvy and scabies was just a small part of their adventure. Arriving on dry land, their challenge was to sell the finest English cloth to people who looked different, sounded different and had a different culture to them. These were brave men. Many years later, in 1837, their success was recognised when the Hull and Humber Chamber of Commerce was formed.
"In some ways, it was extraordinarily difficult for the merchant adventurers. In other ways, they had it easy: often, they were 'the only game in town' when it came to selling fine cloth, and – to some extent – they could let the product do the talking for them. These days, we have no such luxury. The coming of the global village has made overseas markets more accessible, but it has also increased competition to an astonishing degree.
"In this ultra-competitive, international market, we cannot simply rely on our products and services 'selling themselves'. We need to understand our customers better than ever before – their needs, aspirations and idiosyncrasies. As businesses, we need to be 'customer led', not 'product-led'.
"In September, the new Hull and Humber World Trade Centre was officially opened by the European Union's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson. The building opens for business in January, and we will show the world that, generations on, our region continues to produce some of the finest 'Merchant Adventurers' in the world."
A few weeks later, Carolyn also addressed guests at the Chamber's annual dinner, which was held at the Kingston Communications Stadium in Hull (pictured).
As part of this event, we gave out 'travel survival cards': key words and phrases in 15 different languages. You can download the cards (in JPEG format) here:
Download Arabic.jpg
Download Bengali.jpg
Download Chinese_Cantonese.jpg
Download Chinese_Mandarin.jpg
Download French.jpg
Download German.jpg
Download Hindi.jpg
Download Hungarian.jpg
Download Italian.jpg
Download Japanese.jpg
Download Polish.jpg
Download Portuguese.jpg
Download Romanian.jpg
Download Russian.jpg
Download Spanish.jpg
We also issued a 'World Trade Centre quiz', which was somewhat less popular (!).