Pivoting Event Companies in Crisis

Social distancing had caused many business models to collapse overnight. The Restaurant Association of Singapore made news that 80% of their members will shut down as they are only allowed to do takeaways business. Singapore Airlines had to obtain S$15 billion of relief support underwritten by Temasek and their flights declined by 96% with travel restrictions. Australia’s second largest airline, Virgin Australia, had its planes seized by Perth Airport over A$6.8 billion in unpaid debt as it went into liquidation.

Singapore hotels’ occupancy declined on average by 32.1% to 51% for February 2020 and would worsen as tourists stop visiting. Tenants clamored for rent freeze and landlords cut their dividends by 80%. These big physical businesses attract popular media attention headlines but there is a neglected industry that has been directly and savagely hit: events industry.

Like all the other types of physical industry players, the events industry had zero revenue since February 2020 when events sponsors started to cancel events. Like other businesses, the events companies had to pivot to adapt to the new environment. In today’s article, we will look at how two different events companies, one catering to businesses and one catering to consumers, pivoted.

Digital Live Streaming & Sales

Kent Teo is the events industry veteran. He had run events company, Invade, for the past 10 years. Well-known consumer events such as Artbox and Shilin Night Market are his products. “Covid-19 has created a level playing field as even big players have suffered sharp declines in revenue. This is a window of opportunity for nimble players to think out of the box and be the first-mover to transform the industry with novel ideas.” Said Kent Teo.

True to his word, Kent and his team took only 3 weeks to conceptualize, plan and execute the Digital Shilin Festival. This value proposition is simply to help retailers and F&B vendors to generate more sales in this difficult period.

These vendors will livestream their product from their house or store. Invade will provide the digital platform to collect and distribute the sales proceed and arrange the delivery. For the average consumers, this would likely be their first digital shopping experience which would be an eye-opening experience.

Virtual Events Platform

Jie Hao knew that the events business was going through a major crisis in January 2020 when his Hong Kong operations started to receive cancellations. By then, he knew that Covid-19 was no longer contained within mainland China. His company, Micepad, caters events such as corporate meetings, leadership summits for associations and corporations around the world.

While the level of disruption was enormous, the change itself was not a surprise to Jie Hao. He had led change since 2013 when he initiated several digitalization processes. Today, Micepad provides a complete set of tools for organizers to provide a seamless experience to their attendees, from pre-registration to post registration. This capability complements the virtual meeting wave even in the post Covid-19 world.

“The fact that Facebook and Microsoft had moved all their events online in June 2021 sends a big signal to the events industry. It means that even after Covid-19 ends, companies would embrace online meetings and the supply chain would have been deeply impacted. We need to adapt to virtual meetings as the new normal.” Said Jie Hao, co-founder and CEO of Micepad.

To this end, Micepad had deployed its in-house custom branded microsite of Micepad virtual events platform which allows companies to have dedicated control of the process. The Singapore Exchange is now requiring companies to conduct their Annual General Meeting (AGM) online and had provided them at $5,000 grant for that meeting. Micepad will be well positioned to serve this specific niche of virtual AGM with the launch of its new virtual events platform.

#SaveEventsSG

The events industry is highly fragmented with niche players and largely invisible to the general public and government officials. The events industry had banded together to get equal treatment with the jobs support scheme as the hotel and airlines industries. Beyond that, nimble players are starting to move ahead with innovative ideas to survive the Covid-19 storm.