A three-person company based in Villach in Carinthia, Austria, has developed an ecological process for painting starry skies onto ceilings. Using night glowing colours and no phosphorus, the Starseed painting of the Milky Way and the Big Dipper are Top Impex’s hot new product aimed at the hotel industry, and private and old people’s homes.

It is claimed that these starry skies have a calming effect on residents suffering from dementia in old people’s homes. Business was healthy but CEO Walter Jakobitsch was looking for new markets in the shipbuilding and hotel sectors across the border with Italy. The huge shipyards of Fincantieri, near Trieste, offered plenty of cabins to paint but the cruise ship market is difficult to break into.

Jakobitsch approached his local Enterprise Europe Network branch, the Economic Chamber of Carinthia, Klagenfurt, to help him develop commercial links. The Enterprise Europe Network brings together 600 organisations in 50 countries. It helps companies find partners through a powerful database containing thousand of company profiles and through specialised matchmaking and brokerage events.

Network expert Elisabeth Hauer invited him to a business-to-business matchmaking event in Klagenfurt in 2009 for the Alpe Adria region. “We know Top Impex well,” she says. “We’ve worked with them for many years, helping them find new distribution partners.”

There, Jakobitsch met Sabina Dandrich from Aries, the Enterprise Europe Network branch in Trieste, and she introduced him to a number of clients, including Holiday SAS. She says: “Holiday SAS are the largest subcontractor of Ficantieri shipbuilders. They work in cruise ship and hotel signage, and the two were a perfect fit.”

Top Impex now has exclusive rights for cruisers and hotels in the North East of Italy. “Thanks to the meeting, it all went very fast – bang, bang, bang,” Jakobitsch says.  “I wouldn’t have met these ship builders without the Network’s help.”