Summit Events x Revolve
Our partnership with Summit Events has been an incredible journey, built on shared values of collaboration, innovation, and creating meaningful connections. Together, we’ve worked to deliver exceptional experiences that truly make a difference. This is the story of our partnership so far, and we can’t wait to see what’s to come.
What did 2020 looked like for Revolve?
Like many businesses, uncertainty, fear and instability were words that described the first part of 2020, there were certainly more questions than answers. In addition, three weeks before the start of the UK lockdown, my business partner Kate Bowers and I had completed the buyout of Revolve (formerly Pti Worldwide, established in 2005) - what timing!
Like all businesses, we had to think and move quickly, ensuring we focused on the right parts of the business to ensure its immediate survival and long-term future. One thing that was never in doubt was our 2020 partnership with Summit Events and our attendance at their event was an absolute must.
The team at Summit moved quickly and it wasn’t long before the phone rang with the Virtual Summit solution, it was a great approach and gave us full confidence knowing all the Summit characteristics were still there. Understanding we were able to attend a business development event that year when we needed it the most was a huge relief and helped shrink some of that uncertainty and fear.
Alongside this, we’d been working on our virtual solution to connect with our learners and create an experience that wasn’t readily available in our industry. We built a set of broadcasting studios that enabled us to deliver immersive learning experiences and more. We use the studios for all our media production and streaming requirements including training, podcasts, vlogging, films, presentations, sales, awards and communication events.
So the Summit team had provided their partners with a solution that no one else could, and we’d like to think we did the same, and this is why we think we were able to maximise the opportunity presented to us at The Human Resource and People Development Summit 2020 (virtual). Summit had created the platform, and we were ready to step up and deliver in that virtual space.
We used our studios for the meetings, we followed up every meeting with a demo video that was tailored to each conversation and like Summit had done, we provided a virtual people development solution that others weren’t offering. We believe that the strength of those two things, a great Summit experience and our new virtual delivery solution, allowed us to have a great event which resulted directly in four new client relationships.
Emergence of a Partnership
When we got back to the face-to-face, there had been a bit of a shift in the experience, the suppliers and delegates alike all seemed more focused. The events in Copenhagen, Sitges and Madrid were packed full of people who genuinely wanted to grow their networks, share best practices and build great partnerships for the long term.
This fits with everything we are about as an organisation, building genuine partnerships that deliver long-term results for our clients people and organisations, not selling.
Because of this, as well as the strength of the partnership between Summit's Honor Rudd and myself, we decided we wanted to invest more in the partnership as Lead Sponsors of the Sitges event, which went so well that we agreed to another year in Madrid, and within 24 hours of that event, we signed up as Lead Sponsors for Lisbon 2025.
The partnership between our two organisations goes beyond creating new business opportunities. It’s about thinking differently to create great events and experiences, about working together to come up with new ideas and ways of engaging people and about creating a memorable people development event considered the place to go for building great relationships and partnerships.
Outcome
We have been attending the Summit events since we were founded in 2005 and we come back each year because there is always an opportunity to learn, reflect, laugh and build great relationships.
It goes without saying, they deliver a return for our business, they deliver new partnerships and clients, and since the change in ownership in 2020, the relationship between Summit and Revolve is more indispensable than ever.
Since 2020 Revolve has taken on 10 new clients and has had at least 15+ other serious opportunities that didn’t happen for different reasons (but they were opportunities all the same), and Madrid 2024 was the best yet, with five active conversations progressing throughout the year, one project already live and the hope of more to come.
Plans are already in the making for Lisbon 2025, bringing new thinking and experiences to everyone attending. We can’t wait!