Last week I got back from working at the Ideal Home Exhibition at Earls Court in London. What gets to me the most is that I will never get that time back.
This show used to be the premier event for building/house renovating exhibitions and it is sometheing we had always considered doing. However the cost is phenomenal so we had always shyed away. This year one of our major suppliers Jeld Wen asked us if we would cost share. This meant that they would pay for the stand (£100,000 for the week) and put up the display but we would staff it. How could we lose?
On this stand the displayed their entire range of bi-fold patio doors including the new Smoothfold which I blogged about previously. They also had the new oak Stormsure window which they are introducing in around 8 weeks.
So when we arrived on the Thursday morning we thought that the stand looked great and that we would have a really good show. But the problem was that the exhibition itself was like a wasteland. I still do not have numbers for the visitors but they were few and far between. The interest we had in the products was great and they showed genuine interest in the products. A lot better than at the NEC which, to be quite frank, has a lot of 'Type Kickers'.
So all in all it turned out to be a waste of a week. I would have been much better off staying in Sheffield working my regular job instead of being bored all day then having to get drunk every night 
Oh, but there is a bonus to this visit. I got to meet Gandalf. Or if it wasn't him then its his body double.
hello
how about the effect of this exhibition in this recession time?