Of these, visitor numbers took precedence.

The Innovations Showcase needs a bit more organising and thought to the display; the exhibitor party was not held in the right place and there was too much food on offer and while we had a couple of seminar audiences in the 30 to 50 people range, we also had a couple of low attendances.

The first two are easily sorted and Innovations Showcase entrants will see a huge difference next year.

The party will be held where it was for the first BBEx – upstairs in the Bourne Lounge in the BIC. There will be a few quick drinks, the presentations and then it’s off to your own programme for the evening.

You’ll have noticed the party will be held in the Bourne Lounge. This should give you a clue that there will be no exhibitors in the Bourne Lounge…

But bookings for next year are going so well we will need extra space over the two halls we have. So we’re talking to the BIC about some of its other halls – and they have a lot of space down there.

And we can use some of that space to house the exhibition and also the seminars – as we did for the first BBEx, we’ll return the seminars on the floor of the show so people don’t have to leave the exhibition floor.

OK; that’s a swift chat about the easily fixed things. Now the attendance.

To be honest, we’re not entirely sure what more we could have done this year.

We promoted the show in BB. We sent out direct mail shots. We sent out emails. We sent text messages. We sent out tickets. We got some of our friends to deliver tickets on their van routes round the boatyards. We devoured list after list of email addresses.

We even paid for radio advertising in the Drive Time slots across the BBEx show area.

When I was talking one day to David Lewin, chairman of the Marine Trades Association (MTA), we got onto the subject of BBEx attendance. “I think Mercator did a fantastic job,’ he told me, completely unprompted. ‘I can’t think of anything more you could have done.’

In fact, Lewin might have come up with a thought had he remembered a similar conversation we had a while back on show attendance. ‘Düsseldorf never advertises,’ he’s fond of saying. ‘The exhibitors do the work of bringing the audience in.’

Now while we aren’t sitting here thinking, ‘that’s it, we’ll put the onus on the exhibitors’ (we have a lot more thinking and planning to do yet and I’ll keep you all in touch with what’s going on), Lewin’s not the only one to have made the observation.

Take a look at what Ian Cooke of C-Quip sent to us after this year’s BBEx:

'I can safely say that BBEx 2007 was one of the most successful trade shows that C-Quip has been involved with! Orders received on the first day easily paid for the show expenses (except perhaps for Wednesday’s night out in Bournemouth). The pre-show paperwork was straight forward enough, ‘set up’ and ‘take down’ of stands was calm, access was easy and, although I’m aware it does not suit every sector of the industry, the time of year for most of us was ideal with the 2007 season looming.

Our only complaint, and admittedly it’s a fairly significant one, is that is that there was too much time spent ‘heel kicking’ due to a lack of visitors at certain times of the day. Whilst parts of our days were extremely busy, other parts were not and I have no doubt that any business owner will cringe at the idea of sitting in an empty hall with nobody to talk to but other exhibitors.

Whilst chin-wagging might be quite enjoyable and you may even generate some leads, it’s not likely to pay for the stand investment.

So why was this year’s BBEx so successful for C-Quip?

The main reason for our success undoubtedly came from the very simple fact that we did our very best to give customers a reason to come and see us. We did that by way of show-only offers and by launching several new products at the show. Some were new to C-Quip and the UK and some had never been seen anywhere before, but the point is that they were NEW and the offers gave them an initial stocking incentive!

We even held up the launch of some of these products so that we could present them for the first time specifically at the UK trade show. The theory paid off for us when we won the Innovations Award for our new Super Soaker and rest assured, a UK launch any other time would never had generated such interest.

It is also notable that we sold every one of the 15-odd new products we took to the show!

The next stage was to make sure that all current and potential customers knew about the show well in advance. Brian and Aline Pilcher were on hand with marketing and PR advice and BBEx provided invitations specifically for this reason with downloadable logos available for letterheads and mailshots. We even used it on a dedicated section in our own website.

Steering committee
Following a steering committee meeting at the Southampton Boat Show which identified a difficulty in reaching some businesses that perhaps are not BMF members or Boating Business subscribers, we decided to take the invitations a stage further. We gave our van drivers a box load with the task of dropping one in to every business in every marina on our delivery run. In fact we ran out, twice!

We’re visiting the marina anyway so why not take a few extra minutes to ensure everyone gets an invitation? After all it’s in our own interest! Perhaps they didn’t all come, but imagine what the reaction could be if we were all doing it, all around the country!

This, then, is the crux of it. In the interest of our own success, I would invite every exhibitor to ask themselves two fundamental questions. 1) Have I invited those people I want to visit my stand and 2) What have I got to show them that they haven’t seen before?

If we all take on board that fact that BBEx, under any guise, is effectively ‘OURS’, the more it has potential to succeed. Yes it’s the responsibility of Mercator Media to organise the show to the standard we expect, at a venue we like, at a time of year we approve of and with all the appropriate marketing, but the responsibility for its success should not rest solely on the shoulders of Andrew Webster and his team.

If they fail in these expectations we certainly have cause to complain but to those ‘moaning minis’ that spent a large proportion of the show complaining about numbers through the door and subsequently didn’t have the show they had hoped for, ask yourselves these two questions now and see what you can do individually to aid in its success for 2008.

No doubt
I have absolutely no doubt that there are ears in the organiser’s office willing to listen to all ideas!

The BBEx show could, and certainly should be, an excellent platform from which we can launch the UK marine trade into every new season but, as an industry, we need to get behind it and plan for it in advance. Not every business will be in a position to do the same as C-Quip but my point is that, as an exhibitor, it is as much my responsibility to get people through the door as it is the organisers.

In fact more so as I stand to gain much more than they do!

Isn’t it about time we shouldered just a little of the responsibility and make visiting BBEx a highlight of our customers’ year and use it to kick-start the beginning of every new season?

We are pleased to have paid our deposit for 2008 already!'

Ian Cooke
director, C-Quip

Captions to pictures below, left to right:

Bournemouth’s BIC has proved a popular venue for BBEx – see you there for the 2008 show on February 13 and 14

C-Quip's Cooke: ‘one of the most successful trade shows C-Quip has been involved with’