At this year’s Our World-Underwater visitors will see something a little different when it comes to Aqua Lung’s presentation. They are not only building a full service booth but an actual village of vendors who have a lot to offer those who attend this year’s event Feb. 17-19 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Ill.
Aqua Lung has taken a page from the European market and implemented it at this year’s OW-U event. According to Jeff Wandschneider, Midwest Regional Sales Manager for Aqua Lung, they are creating an Aqua Lung Village in a section of the OW-U event in order to offer those visiting the show all things related in one place. “This is going to be a co-op event we are hoping people respond well to,” says Wandschneider. “The aim is to bring in other dive industry leaders by co-oping booth space with other retailers. We have White’s Manufacturing who does drysuits coming onboard and we are also using two booth spaces in order to do a series of seminars which will take place on the floor. These three seminars will be repeated each day of the event so everyone will have a chance to see them.” Wandschneider says the seminars will cover White’s Drysuits and the thermo fusion diving system, the introduction of the new Legend Regulator and the third will be about how divers can travel light.
The total number of booths in the Aqua Lung Village will be 10 to begin with and Wandschneider hopes to see it grow as they develop this new concept. “We have basically taken this idea and improved upon it,” Wandschneider says. “We have had a great response as well. So far, we have Below H2O (Booth 525) out of Naperville, Ill., Love’s Park Scuba (Booth 626) out of Love’s Park, Ill., Pirate’s Cove Diving (Booth 624) in Milwaukee, Wisc. and Diver’s Lair (Booth 622) from Valparaiso, Ind. along with ourselves and White’s. We are pretty excited about the whole project.”
Dan Badgley, National Sales Manager of Aqua Lung America says he is excited about the new concept as well. “We are expanding a concept which was already working, and making it even better,” Badgley says. “We are all working in cooperation making it a great situation for everyone involved. I look forward to next year when I am sure our village concept will grow once other vendors see the way it will aid their businesses in drawing in divers.”
For more info on Aqua Lung visit www.aqualung.com/us and for info on Our World-Underwater visit www.ourworldunderwater.com. ■
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