In November 2020, Variety Communications was featured in The Business Times for successfully transforming our business and pivoting into the hybrid events domain in preparation of the post-Circuit Breaker era.

This is not the first business transformation by the company, and certainly not the last. Started as a one-man equipment repair company in 1978, Variety Communications saw opportunities in the local events industry in the 1990s as Singapore position itself as the Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE) hub of the region and rode on the growth of events locally to add a new business segment to the company’s portfolio.

Since then, Variety Communications worked with event planners, corporate companies, hotels and other event venues as a one-stop equipment rental provider that supports all aspect of equipment demands for events. In addition, the company also value-add its services by offering an array of supplementary add-ons such as design conceptualization, backdrop printing, video production and editing services amongst others.

But Covid-19 changed all of that.

The pandemic brought international travel to a halt and Singapore – a nation-state highly reliant on Travel and MICE – was inevitably affected. Singapore Tourism Board (STB) reports that:

In 2020, the global travel and hospitality suffered a staggering loss of US$935 billion, with the business events industry among the worst hit. The onset of the pandemic was a wake-up call for the industry, heavily dependent on physical interaction, to reinvent itself.

With the rise of ‘The Zoom Era‘ and the great Digitalization-wave as a result of the pandemic, Variety Communications recognized that the landscape of events has evolved and the company will need to accept and adapt to these changes in order to stay relevant. That was the main driver behind the latest pivot from a purely physical event-based equipment rental company into a hybrid event technology solutions provider.

Mr Yeo Wei  Jie, the company’s Managing Director, shared: “The pandemic has given us the opportunity to take a step back and relook into our business as a whole. Now, as the industry leans more towards a hybrid event format which combines both in-person and virtual experiences, we are able to offer the best of both worlds to planers and attendees alike.“