Northern suburbs business expo doubles attendance, empowering local entrepreneurs

• The second annual Bellville Business Expo at Tyger Valley Shopping Centre Arena attracted over 300 businesses, buyers, and industry leaders for networking and growth opportunities.
• Highlights included keynote speakers, mentorship prizes, and the debut of the Bellville Connect Level Up Business Series.
• This expo, now a major event in Cape Town’s northern suburbs, showcased the vibrant entrepreneurial spirit of the Bellville community.

This year’s second annual Bellville Business Expo at the Tyger Valley Shopping Centre Arena offered yet another breeding ground for local entrepreneurs to strut their services and product lines.

This gathering, orchestrated by the Greater Tyger Valley Partnership (GTYVP), has established itself as a premier business event in Cape Town’s northern suburbs.

With this year’s doubled ticket bookings, the floor presented diverse businesses an opportunity to connect with industry leaders, buyers and funding providers between Thursday 17 and Friday 18 October.

Keynote addresses delivered by the likes of Mayco member for economic development James Vos, Warren Hewitt (CEO – The Greater Tyger Valley Partnership), André du Toit a.k.a. The Big Positive Guy and Annie Olufuwa addressed a range of topics tailored to growing enterprises.

Luring business abroad

Vos expressed his enthusiasm: “Another successful Bellville Business Expo has now concluded, furnishing even more local businesses with opportunities to forge meaningful connections with buyers, investors, and incubators.”

Opening the stage for a series of speakers and topics centred on business, Warren Hewitt, James Vos and Tanya Heimann declared the Bellville Business Expo open for business. On the far right the expo’s Master of Ceremonies, Kevin Abbott, beams with glee.

He took pride in the City’s progress in improving policies and procedures to fast-track regulatory permits for businesses, as well as connecting Cape Town with over 30 international destinations, and vice versa.

“We want to get visitors and locals to get to experience the fullness of our city and not only concentrate it in a few parts. They need to go out to all corners of the city,” said Vos.

Creating space

Welcoming attending biz-bodies, Tanya Heymann (general manager, Tyger Valley Centre) said the centre embraces the growth of the smaller trader.

“We’ve seen opportunities where traders have started in our general areas and have actually evolved into the traditional retail spaces and have made a huge success of what they’re doing.”

She said this expo not only aims to showcase the vibrant business community of Bellville, “but to celebrate innovation, collaboration and the spirit of entrepreneurship.

“You as small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs) are all the building bricks of the economy and without you we can’t do it.”

Other talks featured Du Toit’s topic: Four things they don’t teach you in business school, as well as Olufuwa from Story’d speaking on The Storytelling Advantage: Boosting your brand loyalty and sales.

New to this year’s programme was the debut of the Bellville Connect Level Up Business Series, which gave businesses an opportunity to compete to win business growth resources.

Selected businesses benefited from mentorship partnerships, branding packages and other prizes aimed at accelerating their growth.

This year’s expo was a resounding success, bringing together over 300 local businesses, industry leaders and entrepreneurs to showcase their products and services across a range of sectors, including technology, medical, finance, hospitality, property and retail.