The Free-For-All Wedding Marketplace vs The Professional Bridal Industry

Out of the 23,331 wedding suppliers rated by ABIA over the past 4 years (as at 2011), 5400 have either gone broke, ceased servicing weddings or disappeared off ABIA’s Radar. The simple reason for such a high attrition rate is because anyone can enter and exit the wedding marketplace irrespective of their knowledge, experience, expertise or reputation.

Solution

The simple solution to this high attrition rate is to deliver wedding professionals an industry body which provides a bone fide means for them to step up and out of the free-for-all wedding marketplace.

Support & verify the past performance of bridal professionals.

Since it’s inception in 1997 ABIA has collected performance statistics from over 50,000 brides who rated the quality of their wedding supplier’s product, service, value and staff. These bridal customer statistics provide the impeccable foundation necessary for an industry authority to support & verify the past performance of bridal professionals.

Designing the blue print

Since 2008 The Africa Bridal Industry Academy has been silently and quietly going about designing the blue print which sets the essential standards required to build a professional Australian bridal industry authority. The blue-print for a professional bridal industry body has now been completed and will be implemented by the Africa Bridal Industry Academy under license from ABIA in Australia.

South Africa’s 1st national bridal industry authority

Effective September 2011 the Africa Bridal Industry Academy will commence the roll out of South Africa’s 1st National Bridal Industry Authority, based on the 200,000 scores, extracted from the 40,000 ratings, supplied by over 20,000 past brides on the 7,00 wedding suppliers which still exist today from the 35,331 who have been ranked, rated and evaluated by both the bridal customer and the bridal industry over the past 10 years.

New branding campaign

To promote the foundation of the industry, ABIA will roll out a complete new branding campaign, consisting of:

  • A new website featuring a directory of over 6,000 wedding suppliers, ranked by their performance over the past 5 years.
  • We have signed a Licensing Agreement with ABIA in Australia which gives us access to a sophisticated and automated web platform. This is the basis of the new ABIA (old SABIA in South Africa).
  • A provincial & national branding & promotion campaign in 8 bridal magazines with a combined distribution of aprox 230,000 copies.
  • Attendance at a series of selected bridal expos throughout the country to promote the highest ranking wedding suppliers.
  • A series of 3 provincial and national industry awards to honour the best bridal suppliers as determined by past bridal customers.
  • A series of seminars designed to assist and support professional bridal industry suppliers who have gained the necessary knowledge, experience, expertise and reputation to qualify for entry to the Africa Bridal Industry Academy.