Setting the stage for success
Worldbex provides an ideal platform for business transactions, best practices sharing, and introduction of latest trends and innovations.
It was the need to prove something for himself and for his country that allowed Joseph Ang to create the Philippines’ biggest exhibition and events management company to date.
Ang—who had put up Worldbex Services International (WSI) in 1996—recalled that he was attending an exhibit abroad when he thought of making an offer to its foreign organizer to hold the same event in the Philippines. That offer, however, was rejected.
“Creating WSI wasn’t really my plan. This was just by accident. I attended an event whose organizer was a foreigner. Their event has legs in different Southeast Asian countries except Philippines and Laos. I invited the organizer to also host an exhibit in the Philippines but they declined because they didn’t see the potential of the Philippine market,” Ang recalled.
“They believed hosting in the Philippines wouldn’t fly. So being a Filipino, I have to prove them wrong (and show them) that the Philippines is an emerging country and has a lot of potential. With Filipino pride in my heart, I started doing an exhibit to prove to them that Filipinos can do it,” he explained.
WSI hosted 156 booths in its first exhibition.
Finding better ways
At that time, Ang was a businessman engaged in supplying building materials. He would normally frequent and join local exhibits that were, back then, often held in hotel ballrooms.
The quality of these exhibits, according to Ang, was not at par with those being held abroad.
“I thought of challenging myself by finding ways of how we can better hold our exhibitions. I told myself that I will organize a show that will make sure my exhibitors will be happy by offering them the results that I myself as an exhibitor before is looking for,” he shared.
Thus, the real work had started—from finding ways to better promote the exhibit so that participants would get quality inquiries and feedback, down to convincing various clients to take part in an entirely new and bigger expo concept.
“Luckily, our initial foray allowed us to host 156 booths, and that was a time when having 85 booths in an exhibit was the biggest. Almost 70 percent of our initial participants were foreign exhibitors. But what’s unforgettable was that it reached Malacañang and (former) President Fidel V. Ramos visited us,” Ang recalled.
Starting from scratch
Ang admitted that organizing such events was difficult and challenging especially for someone like him who did not have any experience as an exhibit organizer then. He had to start from scratch and study the rules of the trade.
“We have to start from ABC because to begin with, I am not an organizer by nature. It took me over a year to plan it well and I had to visit exhibits in different countries, and set appointments with different embassies and companies. After staging the first show in 1996, that’s when the real challenge set in. It was 1997 and we were about to stage our second exhibit when the Asian financial crisis started. It was very difficult to encourage people to join the show,” Ang shared.
“Funds were scarce and the exhibitors had more important priorities then than joining exhibits so we had to work double or triple our efforts compared to the first year. But if you are focused on your goal, you don’t feel the pain especially if you’re working from the heart. Luckily, everything went well because we planned carefully and we never deviated from it,” Ang further related.
Resounding success
Today, WSI is enjoying a resounding success from hosting some of the country’s biggest and most attended expositions.
From its initial aim to prove to the whole world that Filipinos can make it and that the Philippines does have a potential, WSI now works on its new mission, which is to stage nothing short of world class exhibitions that would allow both visitors and participants to get more than their money’s worth.
Among its more notable expos is Worldbex or the Philippine World Building and Construction Exposition, which has been a haven for the local and international building and construction industry.
Dubbed to be Asia’s most attended construction exposition, Worldbex has also established partnerships with countries such as Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brunei, China, Finland, Hongkong and Germany, to name a few of the 25 participating countries. It thus makes for an ideal platform for business transactions, best practices sharing, and the introduction of latest trends and innovations.
Worldbex is widely renowned for putting together over 500 exhibiting companies engaged in building materials, equipment services, as well as construction design and development, in more than a thousand booths in a Wi-Fi ready exhibit area of 30,000 sqm.
It is also known for lining up the country’s best architects and interior designers under one roof, along with the leading manufacturers and furniture exporters; for showcasing the top colleges and universities in interschool interior design competition; and for bringing in the biggest names in the local and international building and construction scene for seminars in a single exhibit.
Indeed, Ang and his vision have not only created the perfect platform for construction and other industry related firms to take off, but it has also brought the country and the Filipino people into the consciousness of the world.
Through his hard work and perseverance, Ang was able to prove to the world that the Philippines—and a local firm at that—is highly capable of staging such exhibitions.
And today, Ang is simply happy that WSI continues to host such expos and that his passion for these events has been adapted by his children.
“I’m happy because I make a lot of people happy through the shows that we organize—whether they are an exhibitor or visitor. Also, I’m happy to see my children all grown up now and that they’ve adapted the passion of making people around them happy and capturing the hearts of people through these shows,” Ang concluded.
