Dear AMCHAM Members and friends,
Welcome to Issue number 58 of your AMCHAM Newsletter!
For the largest part of this Covid crisis period, we in AMCHAM have targeted our virtual interviews towards the international corporate giants with big affiliates in the Luxembourg economic ecosystem. We do not apologize for doing this as these big internationally focused corporate giants are very important for our Luxembourg economy, have world-wide exposure to the challenges we all face and, through their knowledge of global best practices, may well have the best insights into the big picture and most successful potential solutions we need. While this focus on “big” has clearly made a lot of sense for multiple reasons, Luxembourg is more than just the big fish! The world looks very different from the perspective of a small startup, an independent, a third generation family owned mid-sized enterprise, or a tiny startup just emerging from someone’s own mind. So, in this issue we have decided to start to be more balanced and inclusive in our focus and are pleased to talk with a well-respected and well known relocation expert successfully running the modest sized Luxembourg branch of an international relocation company. Annemarie Wispelweij has been the Country Manager for the Luxembourg branch of the MAP Group for some years now. Enjoy reading about the evolution of her customer’s needs and the other challenges she and her colleagues have faced during this period of Covid crisis. It is an interesting read and Annemarie is one smart lady with lots of good information and advice to share. Thank you Annemarie for sharing your wisdom and experiences!
As you will see, we also have begun putting more emphasis on promoting our AMCHAM member companies to each other and a wider audience. We are very proud of our AMCHAM membership, and are trying to do our very best to connect, promote them and to support them to be as successful as possible. Please read these mini introductions in this and in future issues.
Originally we had not planned to hold any physical events this year… after all, we have no interest to put our members at risk or to host any sort of super spreader event! But now that the government assures us there are safe ways to bring our members and friends together, we have adjusted our thinking. We will continue to do digital events because they are a very effective, low cost and efficient ways to pass valuable information to you quickly. But we likewise love networking events and therefore have arranged to do an American Thanksgiving event for 200 of our members and invited guest. We are astonished and delighted our American Thanksgiving was completely sold out within five days of the announcement! We sincerely thank our members and friends for their support!
Many of you know AMCHAM is dedicated to support the commercial relaunch of the Luxembourg and Grand region retail sectors which have been so financially challenged by this Covid experience. We are delighted our Member Benefits Club initiative has helped retailers connect with new customers and allowed AMCHAM affiliated employees to get price discounts while shopping at these solid excellent quality retail enterprises! We currently have 160 establishments partnering with us and 1,000 card holders. Since we want to push this a bit harder to help the retailers during the Christmas shopping season, we have decided to offer non-AMCHAM members the opportunity to buy our shopping discount cards for an annual subscription of 25 euro starting with this Newsletter issue. See the details below, buy these gift cards to give to your friends and family as low cost Christmas presents, encourage your friends to give these cards as gifts and happy shopping to all! https://www.amcham.lu/amcham-benefits-club/ambc-card-for-non-members/
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To all, our very best wishes and sincere thanks for letting us serve you!
With respect and appreciation,
Paul
Paul Michael Schonenberg
Chairman and CEO
AMCHAM.lu