The very first root of APREC is an exhibition and conference in 1983 in Tokyo/Japan - an activity which was graced by the Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone and by this also got its political high level reputation. The intention is a bi-annual event to promote the modern/organized retail-industry as a sector across Asia Pacific and which therefore is rotating among its various national retailers associations.

China was host first in 2005 in Beijing and now for a second turn in 2019 in Chongqing - an agglomeration of 31 million inhabitants. The international Asian Pacific network was awarded at this occasion by the Peace Circle Chair Collection Certificate of the Chinese Government. More than 4.000 business people visited the Conference with speakers of all big Chinese players. In the Closing Ceremony the APREC-flag was handed over for the 2021 Congress to Indonesia.
 

At the second International Two-dimensional Code Industry Development Summit in Foshan/China Prof.Dr.B.Hallier was elected to become a member of the Preparatory Committee for the Summit 2020 with the agenda to establish a permanent global Coordination Organization (see also www.european-retail-academy.org/TUN)

According to Prof.Hallier in future the creation of new products will have to be based on the knowledge/wisdom that only globally standardized codes for product-innovations will enable marketing to enter the new world of the Internet of Things (IoT) and mass-consumption. Asia with its IT-driven young society is setting the frame for this development.
 

According to Prof.Dr.B.Hallier the exhibition EuroShop, founded in Germany in 1966 and today's world-leader of shopfitting/retail technology/POS-marketing, is a permanent innovation driver of retail but also in a change itself by innovation, segmentation and globalization.

EuroCIS, founded in Germany in 1997 as an annual congress in-between the tri-annual EuroShop in response to the speed of technology innovations is meanwhile Europe's number one retail technology exhibition; the exhibition space of C star in Shanghai/China can be compared with the size of EuroCIS; and the in-store-asia/Mumbai is the largest retail trade fair on the Indian Sub-Continent.
 

According to market estimates the organized retail in India will grow by 76 percent uptill 2021. Within Euromonitor International's Top 100 Retailers Asia: Walmart is leading India's ranking by 14,5 billion US $ turnover with Amazon (9,8) second placed, the Future Group (3,9), the Reliance Group (3.7) and the Tata Group (2,9). Just at the moment Amazon shows interest to buy about 10 percent of the shares of the Future Group.

For many years Prof.Dr.B.Hallier supported the Indian Retail Forum in Mumbai, meeting his friends Kishore Biyani and Nagesh (Link). For long years of advice Prof.Dr.Hallier got the Retail Leadership Award from the Asia-Africa-GCC Congress. Nowadays Mumbai's exhibition in-store-asia is connected with the EuroShop network.
 

In 2018 the World Congress of Entrepreneurs signed the "Zagreb-Declaration" in Croatia as a call to encourage the civil society to participate actively in a social market economy. The meeting was backed by business, universities and administrations from the local, regional and national levels of the area of former Yugoslavia plus Austria and Germany.

This initiative will be carried on from October 16th-18th, 2019 at Skopje/Northern Macedonia. "The development and transfer of entrepreneurial skills is a challenge for applied sciences in areas of former socialism" Prof.Dr. B.Hallier stated "The wealth of the nations is the accumulation of permanent/ongoing innovations: this can be optimized by cooperation between governments/laws, sciences and businesses" (more info: sinisha.zaric@gmail.com).