After attending Sign Africa Johannesburg 2008 on Friday 12 September 2008 Arthur Van Wyk, the head of Brand marketing for Sytech Supplies, came back to Durban with a simple message for his management team, ‘We have to go to Sign Africa Johanneburg in 2009 and when we do.. we either go big or go home.’

That advice was well-heeded and was evident in the size of the stand the company booked (144sqm) at Sign Africa Johannesburg 2009.

On display at the Sytech stand was the newest range of digital UV printers and cutting plotters from GCC, a series of CNC routers from Viccam, water-based digital printers from Lecai (pronounced Le-Tai), Solvent and UV digital inks from Triangle, de-identification liquids from Crystaltek, a host of digital print media and colour sign vinyl and the busiest, most enquired about dye sublimation systems.

‘Day one of Sign Africa saw the entire contingent of staff at the Sytech stand run around like ants, helping clients, distributing product samples, answering questions and of course selling. Our range of CNC routers generated loads of enquiries and the brochures (which are slow moving at our business premises) were taken like they contained insulin and everybody that attended were diabetic,’ said Van Wyk.

On day two further buzz was created and attention drawn to the Sytech Supplies stand when Arthur Van Wyk was interviewed at the stand by a television crew from the SABC3 design program “Hatch”. Every member of staff fielded queries from multiple attendees – sometimes simultaneously. There was also a lot of attention given to the water-based Lecai printers after everybody saw the immaculately colourful backlit film print-outs on the exhibition floor.

By approximately 10:00 am on Day 3 a gentleman came by looking for Richard (our Technical Manager). He had a cheque ready to pay for a CNC router and wanted to take it right there and then. Not long after our demo model heat press that was on exhibition was paid for and taken as well.

Eventually this is what happened to every single machine on the Sytech Supplies exhibition stand at Sign Africa. The only machine they had to bring back to Durban was the GCC 250UV digital printer. The reason for that is because it went straight to the exhibition from the boat and nobody locally had been trained on how to use it yet. As soon as training finishes this week, that printer will be shipped to its new owner as well.

‘So in a sense we had been “cleaned out” at Sign Africa 2009.