ADVANSTAR & BALLUUN JOIN FORCES
TO DRIVE THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS E-COMMERCE
Balluun to Power Advanstar’s “Shop The Floor” Offerings

July 17th, 2013 (NEW YORK, NY) – Advanstar Global LLC (“Advanstar”), a leading events and marketing services company and owner of Advanstar Communications Inc. and ENK International LLC, has entered into a relationship with Balluun, a leader in social business-to-business technology. Under the agreement, Advanstar and Balluun have agreed to merge Balluun’s powerful software platform with Advanstar’s innovative Shop The Floor offering. Deal terms were not disclosed.

With its portfolio of 134 trade shows and conferences, 30 publications, and over 200 digital properties, Advanstar is an established leader in creating connections between buyers and sellers in major industries, including fashion, licensing, powersports, and life sciences. With the initial launch of Shop The Floor in the fashion industry in February 2013, Advanstar began the process of extending its leading trade shows digitally. The combination of Balluun and Shop The Floor now seamlessly integrates trade shows, digital showrooms, and b-to-b communication and commerce. The agreement with Balluun allows Advanstar to accelerate its digital growth plans and immediately offer its customers a vibrant online marketplace and robust e-commerce tools that complement its leading tradeshows. Exhibitors will now have year-round market presence, and buyers will enjoy year-round access to products and vendors. In addition, Balluun’s technology will enable Advanstar to provide its customers with a robust commerce-enabled Shop The Floor mobile application, designed to enhance and complement the in-person experience.

Balluun is re-writing the rules of wholesale commerce across all industries, working with leading trade show operators and other key partners around the world. Imbued with tightly integrated social threads, Balluun is able to re-create the in-person dynamic that is vital to sales cultivation and goes well beyond simply automating the order-taking process.

“This partnership combines complementary strengths and focus to benefit the markets and customers we serve,” said Joe Loggia, CEO of Advanstar. “Advanstar has leading brands and hundreds of thousands of customer relationships across multiple industries, while Balluun brings deep software development skills and the latest technology for b-to-b commerce. With this relationship, we will be able to help raise the profile of our exhibitors, expand their exposure to their respective markets, as well as provide more discovery and buying opportunities to our attendees.”

“When we launched Balluun, we knew we were leading the way in shaping the future of wholesale social commerce,” said Peter Koch, CEO and Co-Founder of Balluun. “We realized early on that there is a great need in the tradeshow industry for a platform like Balluun to enhance and extend the experience for exhibitors, attendees and beyond the tradeshow floor. We are thrilled to be partnering with a world-renowned tradeshow organization like Advanstar. Together, we are on a tremendous path that will transform the face of the tradeshow industry.”

About Balluun
A global company, Balluun is headquartered in Switzerland and runs off Silicon Valley-based technology development. The company’s mission is to be the leader in providing patented technology solutions for tradeshows that facilitate, manage, and build wholesale commerce for buyers and sellers worldwide and across all industries. Balluun’s technology is an innovative solution that addresses the needs of tradeshows and leverages the economies of scale technologies can provide. With a guiding philosophy of connecting buyers and sellers and catalyzing growth, Balluun is re-imagining how businesses are created, managed, and can thrive with a technology-driven social business model. For more information or to join Balluun,
please visit: www.balluun.com.

About Advanstar:
Advanstar Global LLC is an event and marketing services business that serves business professionals and consumers in the Fashion, Licensing, Life Sciences and Powersports industries with its portfolio of 134 events, 30 publications, over 200 electronic products and Web sites, as well as educational and direct marketing products and services. Market leading brands and a commitment to delivering innovative, quality products and services enable Advanstar to “Connect Our Customers With Theirs.” Advanstar has approximately 600 employees and currently operates from multiple offices in North America and Europe.