The Group
Our DNA
Weyou Group DNA
The history of Weyou Group is first and foremost the story of a profound transformation in the world of B2B professional exhibitions, experienced from the inside by Romuald Gadrat and his teams.
The 2008 turning point
At the end of the 2000s, while chairman of Tarsus France, Romuald Gadrat faced a double revolution: the 2008 economic crisis and the massive arrival of intelligent digital tools. New marketing tools driven by Google, AdWords and early web strategies brutally transformed business habits.
The conclusion was clear: the world of professional exhibitions had to evolve. On one side, organizers still relied on business cards manually filed in notebooks. On the other, digital platforms already provided dashboards, detailed statistics and ROI analysis capable of proving marketing investment performance.
For Romuald Gadrat, this period marked a major turning point. The future of exhibitions could no longer rely only on traditional exhibiting: companies would now need to precisely measure, qualify and monetize their presence at an event.
The founding alliance
Faced with this shift, the company chose to bring together two complementary generations: a young generation mastering new web tools, digital marketing and the possibilities of the Internet; and experienced sales teams capable of building strong human relationships and selling effectively by phone and in meetings.
This alliance between digital culture and sales expertise became one of the foundations of Weyou Group DNA. The Internet was no longer seen as a threat, but as an opportunity to expand audiences and optimize the business performance of exhibitions.
The birth of two pillars
Once the crisis had been overcome and the organization redesigned, one conviction emerged: the B2B exhibition had to reinvent itself.
- a proprietary technology platform centralizing data from all exhibitions;
- a new business-meeting concept in One-to-One Meetings.
Business has always been built through human encounters: convincing someone face to face, creating a relationship, developing trust and creating opportunities.
Digital platform + human production
The One-to-One Meetings concept was born from this vision: recreating in just a few days the entire natural process of a business relationship, first contact, meeting, discussion, lunch, networking and trust-building, in destinations designed to support business.
Thanks to digital tools, it became possible to contact thousands of decision-makers, analyze their needs and organize thousands of targeted meetings through an increasingly powerful technology platform. Very quickly, the company developed its own algorithms, matchmaking tools and digital solutions to orchestrate meetings, lunches, networking evenings and event logistics.
This complementarity between technology and human production became Weyou Group’s signature.
The more digital develops, the more valuable physical meetings become.
Physical meetings regain value
In an environment where decision-makers spend much of their time behind screens, companies need more than ever to create real human relationships to accelerate business, secure decisions and grow revenue.
This is even stronger in B2B, where many products, solutions and innovations cannot be sold effectively through a screen alone. Understanding a technology, discovering an innovation, appreciating a chair, a fabric or design in general, building trust and creating a lasting commercial relationship all require high-quality human exchanges.
The strength of traditional exhibitions
Traditional exhibitions retain a unique strength: they bring an entire sector ecosystem together in one place. They allow companies to discover new players, meet innovative start-ups, identify partners or suppliers they would not otherwise have encountered, and gain a global view of their market.
These events are also essential places to meet clients physically, strengthen business relationships and bring a brand to life concretely.
Beyond this image dimension, Weyou Group’s traditional exhibitions stand out through a strong feature: they mostly invite and address end buyers, whereas most classic traditional exhibitions are primarily designed for distributors.
This direct focus on end users and final decision-makers radically changes the nature of on-site exchanges: conversations concern real projects, real needs and real purchasing decisions. It is a decisive advantage for exhibitors, who meet the right people at the right decision level.
These exhibitions are also strategic observation grounds for banks, investors and private-equity funds, who can concretely analyze a company’s positioning, image, capacity for innovation, attractiveness and communication within its sector.
One-to-One Meetings Exhibitions
Conversely, One-to-One Meetings Exhibitions Weyou Group were designed first and foremost as business and ROI accelerators.
This is a premium, calm and highly qualified environment entirely designed to encourage strategic exchanges and concrete opportunities. Only CEOs, directors, decision-makers and their specifiers involved in real projects are invited. Every meeting is organized in advance through our matchmaking tools, algorithms and proprietary digital platform.
The goal is clear: enabling companies to meet, in just a few days, as many decision-makers genuinely interested in their solutions as possible, under the best possible conditions.
The choice of destinations, networking organization, lunches, evenings and the entire experience are designed to extend business exchanges in an environment that fosters lasting relationships.
- a premium environment ;
- ultra-targeted meetings ;
- recognized companies ;
- qualified decision-makers;
- high-end networking ;
- a logic fully oriented toward business and ROI.
The strength of the Weyou Group model: complementarity
This complementarity between traditional exhibitions and One-to-One Meetings Exhibitions is precisely what makes the Weyou Group model so strong today.
On one side, the power of an open ecosystem that encourages discovery, image and visibility. On the other, highly qualified events designed to quickly generate concrete, measurable business.
Two formats, one conviction: in a world saturated with digital information, a well-organized physical meeting remains the most powerful lever for creating value.
Sustainable commitment
CSR / ESG
Our host cities: a structurally low-carbon choice
All our events take place in cities connected to Europe’s high-speed rail network. This is no coincidence: Paris, Cannes, Marbella and Amsterdam were selected because they are accessible by train from Europe’s main economic regions.
Train first
An event model designed to reduce air travel when a high-speed alternative exists.
Cannes
Served by direct TGV from Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Brussels. Our partnership with SNCF for the Cannes editions already saves 136,75 kg de CO2e par personne compared with a Paris-Nice flight.
Paris
The epicenter of Europe’s high-speed rail network, accessible station-to-station from London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Cologne, Frankfurt, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux or Barcelona, without going through an airport.
Marbella
Connected via the Madrid-Málaga AVE in 2h35, then a 50-minute transfer. The train offers a carbon factor around 28 times lower lower than air travel on this route.
Amsterdam
Beurs van Berlage is located 400 meters from Amsterdam Centraal, the Eurostar terminus from Paris, Brussels and London.
Paris → Cannes
TGV3,25 kg
Round-trip flight140 kg
136,75 kg CO2e saved per person.
Madrid → Málaga
AVE2,7 kg
Avion76 kg
More than 145 kg saved on a round trip.
Paris → Amsterdam
Eurostar11,5 kg
Avion119 kg
10 times less by train, without check-in time.
Why this choice is structural, not cosmetic. The transport sector represents one third of greenhouse-gas emissions in France. Rail carries 10% of passengers for less than 1% of sector emissions.
Choosing host cities systematically connected to high-speed rail is not a declarative commitment: it anchors all participant logistics in infrastructure that emits on average 3.5 g CO2e per passenger/km by TGV in France and 5.3 g by TGV in Spain, versus 125 to 260 g for short-haul air travel.
Concretely, for a format such as One-to-One Meetings Exhibitions bringing together several hundred Top Decision-Makers over two days, this geographic choice represents several dozen tons of CO2e avoided per edition compared with an equivalent airport-based format.
Main sources: SNCF Voyageurs for transport carbon footprint, earth.org for Spanish AVE, Greenpeace EU for Paris-Amsterdam comparisons.
