A
Adam W
I went to my first 'trade show' today at a local wholesalers (Edmundsons Bournemouth). Whenever people had mentioned them in the past I envisaged a massive exhibition centre full of wideboy sales reps in suits trying to peddle their wares, and I had so far avoided them for fear of having to take a day off work to get to London or even further afield.
Since this one was at a local wholesalers I wasn't expecting much, maybe a few entrepreneurs desperately trying to reinvent the wheel, but the flyer promised a 'free breakfast or lunch' so I thought the worst that could happen was I got a cold, stringy bacon sandwich out of it.
We smashed out the first fix on this kitchen by 1pm so I went down there on my lunch break to be met by extremely professional looking exhibition trailers from the likes of Schneider, Collingwood, Aico and Lewden, with a marquee full of smaller stands from well-known companies like Unistrut, Orbix, Crabtree, SWA, Prysmian etc, plus less well-known companies like some guy selling this range of red testers which are apparently big up north and whose name escapes me although I have one of their pens in my van.
In all I would say there were about 30 trade stands, plus a burger van giving away free breakfasts and lunches on presentation of a ticket from the trade counter after entering the draw to win a telly.
On the whole they weren't expecting anyone to buy anything on the spot, more to introduce their products and give away free samples, which is always better than paying for a sweaty lunch sat in the van.
I don't know if this was just a one-off local event, but if it's being rolled out nationally like some kind of roadshow I would thoroughly recommend having a look; my top tip would be to allow more than half an hour though since I didn't get to look at anywhere near as many stands as I would have liked to.
There are some pictures of the event on their facebook page here and one here in case you can't be doing with facebook:
Since this one was at a local wholesalers I wasn't expecting much, maybe a few entrepreneurs desperately trying to reinvent the wheel, but the flyer promised a 'free breakfast or lunch' so I thought the worst that could happen was I got a cold, stringy bacon sandwich out of it.
We smashed out the first fix on this kitchen by 1pm so I went down there on my lunch break to be met by extremely professional looking exhibition trailers from the likes of Schneider, Collingwood, Aico and Lewden, with a marquee full of smaller stands from well-known companies like Unistrut, Orbix, Crabtree, SWA, Prysmian etc, plus less well-known companies like some guy selling this range of red testers which are apparently big up north and whose name escapes me although I have one of their pens in my van.
In all I would say there were about 30 trade stands, plus a burger van giving away free breakfasts and lunches on presentation of a ticket from the trade counter after entering the draw to win a telly.
On the whole they weren't expecting anyone to buy anything on the spot, more to introduce their products and give away free samples, which is always better than paying for a sweaty lunch sat in the van.
I don't know if this was just a one-off local event, but if it's being rolled out nationally like some kind of roadshow I would thoroughly recommend having a look; my top tip would be to allow more than half an hour though since I didn't get to look at anywhere near as many stands as I would have liked to.
There are some pictures of the event on their facebook page here and one here in case you can't be doing with facebook:
