WOKING Means Business at the HG Wells Conference Centre brought the local business community out in force for a full day of networking and power events.

With a pre-breakfast seminar by Woking Borough Council kicking off events at 7.30, local businesses had the opportunity to attend a series of talks, with Sales by Anthony Stears and LinkedIn by Keith Grover drawing particularly keen interest.

A Woking Chamber of Commerce event, the exhibition was organised by Business Development Chairman, Paul Webster, who said: “Exhibitors were obviously happy, we had some brilliant speakers which the visitors really appreciated, but most of all I thought it was great to see people smiling, enjoying talking to each other and apparently doing business.”

As a key media sponsor for the event the Woking News & Mail was among the exhibitors and were given an exclusive interview with Woking Borough Council CEO Ray Morgan (filmed by Team360media and posted on the News & Mail website).

Other exhibitors included Woking Football Club, which had several representatives from the club in attendance including manager Alan Dowson and Martin Tyler, the Sky sports commentator and assistant manager of the team.

“We met with and spoke to many businesses and are already setting up further meetings for collaborations with them. This was a great event for linking up with local organwisations and we have no doubt that we will achieve what we wanted out of the day," said the club’s Marie Withers.

Among the visitors was Lorna Gangotra winner of BBC TV’s Family Cooking Showdown 2017, who in addition to running her restaurant and business The Little Indian Kitchen, was a panellist at Woking Food Festival and is a regular stallholder at the Ripley Farmers’ Market. She said: “Woking Means Business is a really good opportunity to find out what’s new and to meet businesses in the area.”

Simon Woodbridge, Thomas International said: “I thought it was a great event, very friendly, well organised and really useful for our business to gain exposure in the Woking area. I made some very good contacts both from useful suppliers for our organisation and perhaps more importantly potential new clients.”

Mark Warner, Headline Design & Print, whose team were manning a roulette table at their stand, said: “We had a very good day making new contacts and selling our services to potential customers.”