Uneven fair results

Bringing forward the fair dates and holding Ambiente at the same time in Frankfurt may perhaps have contributed to this development. However, it is possibly only a normalisation of events. The exhibitors mentioned fewer but a clearly better quality of trade visitors. However, the balance drawn up by the exhibitors is very varied. For some the fair was a total success, since they had seen all the main buyers; for others, in contrast, the result was less positive, something some attribute to the lack of big stands in the neighbourhood to act as magnets for visitors. Constant attendance figures This year the entire spectrum offered by the sector could not be viewed by the visitors to Cologne — 87 000 of them from 123 countries, according to information from Köln-Messe. Major power tool manufacturers were missing, as were suppliers of hand tools as well. A similar picture was evident where building materials and chemical products were concerned to. In halls 1 to 3 of DIY’TEC there were whole areas totally devoid of exhibitors, and partitions were used to make the halls look smaller. Things were very quiet in the hall areas 2.2 and 3.2 in particular. This year you could search here in vain for large-scale stands like Henkel’s, for example, which attract the volume of visitors. Although whole sections of halls were unoccupied and individual stand spaces also remained unused, the number of exhibitors was only slightly below last year’s. Information from organisers Köln-Messe states that 3 834 suppliers were represented in the Rhine halls, compared with 3 870 the previous year. The proportion coming from abroad was 69 per cent this year, 66 per cent last year. Expanded services There was a particular great crush of visistors in hall 13 of the World Tools CentreImportant themes at the fair were service offers concerning advice, customer care and comprehensive accessories. The Industry Services centre introduced last year in order to communicate potential services and innovations in a comprehensible way was expanded, whereas two innovation forums and a Speakers’ Corner were new introductions. “These new aspects of the Hardware Fair/DIY’TEC were very well received by visitors,” in the summing-up of Köln-Messe. New fair concept in future Work is currently being done on a new fair concept, whereby it seems that a two-yearly alternating pattern for the key sectors of hard and soft DIY has been more or less agreed upon. The framework for a new concept is to be worked out…