In the Incheon International Information Technology Communication 2009 (ITC2009), the Korea IT Times (KIT) interviewed enthusiastic buyers who came from Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). One is Akram Koultakji, group trading manager of Al Fajor Enterprises and the other is Chris Christodoulou, regional sales manager of Sentry Safe.
Q: How do you find this exhibition and would you please introduce yourself
Koultakji: My name is Akram Koultakji, group trading manger of Al Fajor Enterprises which is one of the leading groups in the UAE, founded in 1970. We are employing around 15,000 people. In the group, we have around 22 companies.
Q: Would you please introduce yourself When did you arrive here in Korea
Christodoulou: My name is Chris Christodoulou, regional sales manager and manufacturer of Sentry Safe and I arrived yesterday afternoon.
Q: How did you find this exhibition including the opening ceremony and preparation
Koultakji: It is well organized, all the people are friendly and exhibitors also have selected quality companies. We found new technologies launched in this exhibition and I think the exhibition size is not big enough comparing to the one of the biggest other exhibitions but its quality is quite high, and you have high quality exhibitors.
Q: Did you find anything particularly interesting in this exhibition
Koultakji: I have not had enough time to visit all the stands yet but briefly we were starting through, there is the one that we saw that is the safe recognition giving a gender and the ages of the people. This is very good to be used in public area for statistical purposes. Of course, there are some other products which is very useful like this, and there should be more interesting products I expect. And what I would like to see here is business to business products field more than others.
Q: What is the most interesting field here, technology or products
Christodoulou: Everything is very interesting. I was thinking that technology is progressive so much and we appreciated the effort that participants made.
Q: Before you arrived in Incheon, Korea, did you have any business relationship with Korean companies
Christodoulou: Yes, we have very close relations working with IBI and we keep also built in technological tie-ups.
Q: What kind of business relationship with Korean companies do you have
Christodoulou: I'm having IT business relations in general with more than 10 companies. And I would like to build more relationships with Korean companies in terms of high-end IT technologies.
Q: Would you specify them in one or two sentences
Christodoulou: We have like a department agency relations with NEXFAIR and in a way, we have been presenting Korea and Korea has been presenting the UAE. We have long term relations and been helping both parties to understand the mentality of two countries and business. One of the main products is wellness products. We are using the brand of an international company with wide range of products. And we are focusing into human-being technology. We are also dealing with I-Tech products like robots. We also tie-up and cooperate with manufacturers and have a lot of products and good business relations. We are looking for Korean companies launching in the UAE.
Q: What do you expect from this exhibition in conclusion
Koultakji: I think it is a great chance to know each other - like Korean companies will be able to know us more, and we will be able to know Korean companies closely. Kind of a communication approach period, we do not expect everything will be finalized during the exhibition. After going back to our office in the UAE, we will talk about things that we have seen. We are looking for consumers and the manufacturers, so both are perfectly matching. As consumers in UAE are quite interested in IT products and Korean IT products are very reliable in the UAE, therefore, people might be using quality Korean products.
Q: I'm curious that you are representing the UAE only or all Middle East countries
Koultakji: I think that is a very important question as you are talking about the UAE and the whole Middle East. There is one answer I would like to let you know is if you are well-established in the UAE, that means you are also well-established in the Middle East.
Q: What do you expect from this exhibition in conclusion
Christodoulou: During this exhibition, I would like to find more innovative technologies so that I can cooperate with them to make profits for both Korea and UAE.
