# Maximising Your Exhibition Investment

- Link: https://eventengine.net/maximising-your-exhibition-investment/
- Published: 2025-11-13T11:17:53+00:00
- Author: rondayvoo

You’ve paid thousands for your exhibition stand. You’ve traveled. You’ve invested
days away from the office. Then 2pm on Day 2 hits, visitor numbers drop, and you’re
checking your phone wondering what to do with that last 15-20% of your investment.
What if instead of wasting that downtime, you could turn it into your most valuable
networking opportunity?

In this episode, Lee sits down with Event Engine co-founder Tim Davies to discuss
an overlooked problem at exhibitions: the wind-down period when energy leaves the
room but exhibitors are still paying to be there. Tim shares how this observation
led to creating Rondayvoo/Match, a matchmaking platform that helps exhibitors build
strategic partnerships during downtime, not just collect leads during peak hours.

### About Tim

Tim Davies is co-founder of Event Engine, which he launched with Lee in 2016. While
Lee handles the technical side, Tim’s role is distinctly non-tech: finding gaps 
in the market and throwing curveballs at the development team. As Director of Partnerships,
Tim has experienced firsthand the frustration of event networking—great chemistry
with potential partners that falls apart once you look under the hood at technical
compatibility.

### Key takeaways

 * **The 20% problem:** Around 2pm on the final day of exhibitions, visitor numbers
   halve every 15 minutes. That wind-down period still represents 15-20% of an exhibitor’s
   total investment, but most are disengaging rather than maximizing it.
 * **Two different objectives: **Events focus infrastructure on the primary goal(
   generating visitor leads) but treat the secondary goal (exhibitor partnerships)
   as an afterthought. These require completely different approaches and information.
 * **Behind-the-scenes conversations: **Partnership discussions need technical details
   visitors don’t care about—API documentation, tech stack, coding standards, integration
   capabilities. This information shouldn’t be public-facing, but it’s crucial for
   potential partners.
 * **Chemistry isn’t enough:** Tim shares how Event Engine has had promising conversations
   with potential partners that collapsed once they examined technical compatibility.
   Wouldn’t it be better to know that upfront?
 * **The Rondayvoo approach: **An exhibitor-only platform hidden from visitors where
   companies create two profiles—what they offer and what they’re seeking—then get
   matched across 5 dimensions with compatibility scores up to 100%.
 * **Proven validation: **At Event Tech Live 2025, 50% of exhibitors opted in within
   3 days of launch, and 20% had completed full profiles before the event, demonstrating
   clear appetite for the solution.

### More highlights

The platform integrates seamlessly with ffair’s event management system, allowing
exhibitors to opt in with a simple task that automatically sends them login credentials.
The matching algorithm considers services offered/needed, geographic coverage, partnership
types, target markets, and primary customers, providing detailed breakdowns of why
companies match.

Tim emphasizes the strategic timeline: complete profiles before the event, focus
on visitor leads during peak hours, then use the wind-down period and pack-down 
time to network with pre-identified compatible exhibitors. The result? Walking away
with strategic partnerships, not just a stack of random business cards.

### Connect with Tim

Website: [https://eventengine.net/match](https://eventengine.net/match)
LinkedIn:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamtimdavies/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamtimdavies/)(
D-A-V-I-E-S, the Welsh way)