Hikvision maintains that it has always been improving its products, marketing and positioning, seeking to anticipate future trends. This attitude led to a strategy adaptation, thus leading the Chinese company, sales leader in its own country, to expand overseas with excellent results – a sales revenue of 2.82 billion USD in 2014, 13,000 employees, 4800 R&D engineers.

In the name of transparency and close relationships with partners, six special guests were given a chance to speak, following the introduction of their respective Hikvision Sales Directors from Italy, North-West Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, UK, Israel and Russia. Each of these distributors shared their story and sense of belonging to the Hikvision family.

Keen Yao, International Marketing Director, has frequently highlighted the importance of this event. It’s now clear that, given the strong position of product lines, the company should aim at strengthening a firm, trustworthy and highly cooperative relationship with its clients, that is to say the distributors throughout Europe.

Hikvision relies not only on the intuition of its managers and skills of distributors, but also focuses on research to stay close to the market and customers. The security and fire market analyst, Aaron Dale from IHS Research was invited to the event, and brought figures and market trends for the forthcoming years. Given the drop in sales of analogue cameras, the growth of second generation HD CCTV devices is now confirmed, such as TVI technology, and the increase in IP cameras’ shipments. In 2013 Hikvision Global market share reached 11%. Dale subsequently touched upon the topic of key vertical markets for Europe. A special attention has to be paid to residential and consumer markets that will eventually involve both traditional video surveillance systems and home monitoring/smart home video surveillance.

A gala dinner organised at the Xabregas Palace in Lisbon was a focal point of these two days: an occasion for networking and assisting at the distributor awards ceremony, who were invited on stage to receive a recognition for their growth performance, technical support to clients or even the long-term relationship with Hikvision.

The second day was then focused on in-depth presentations on technologies and products. Smart and Turbo HD lines were explained in detail, demonstrating that the company is aiming at achieving brand and product-range awareness. This strategy will be even more visible on the upcoming security exhibitions, road shows and events.