Well, this is it! After nine years of hard work, I have the most exciting news to share. As you may have seen in the event industry press, Poken has been acquired by GES, part of a New-York Stock Exchange listed company (Viad Corp: VVI) and one of the world’s leading full-service event suppliers. GES generates revenues of more than $1 billion USD and provides a wide range of live event services and technologies with an unrivalled global reach. In the past four years, the company has invested heavily in event intelligence, adding businesses such as N200, Blitz, onPeak, ON Services and now Poken,
to strengthen its capabilities and offer leading-edge digital services to its exhibition and corporate clients.
This is an exciting step for Poken. For nine years I have led a team of talented people, creating a set of products and a brand recognized in many markets. As a small company, fuelled with the “start-up spirit,” we achieved many things, catering to big-name clients and gaining recognition as a thought leader in the events industry. Our vision of providing a unique, engaging, and 360-degree digital experience to event participants and sponsors has taken hold in the market. We have played the part of a small player with a big dream, and have made it happen. In doing so, the company has reached a stage where we felt it was time scale our operations.
Joining GES will act as a rocket booster for our vision, and our ability to deliver bigger and better things to our clients. Our team is thrilled at the idea of being part of a global organisation with solid, proven processes and far-reaching capabilities so that we can focus on our own strengths: innovation, thought leadership, and building out the leading-edge products that form the broader vision that we have for taking events to the next level. This is also great news for our clients and our partners, who will benefit from GES’ full-scale live events services combined with our innovations, and be able to rely on Poken to deliver at any scale.
Our team members will continue in largely the same roles, serving from New York, Chicago, London, Sibiu and Lausanne. My new role within GES will be Group Commercial Director, leading our sales and marketing efforts in a similar capacity as I have been doing at Poken. I look forward to being able to focus on business development, evangelism, and supporting our customers better.
Exciting times. I owe a huge thank-you to everyone in the core Poken team, to our partners, our customers, and of course to all the people who have supported the company and me over the years. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Selling a company is an entrepreneurs’ dream come true, all the more so when the team can stay together to build more great things.
Onwards and upwards,
Stéphane
