From: Gerald Inchcape-Farquar-Harrharr Brine; Special Envoy, British Embassy, Canberra, Australia
To: Rt. Hon. David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Subject matter: Trade Expositions of the media kind
My dear Dave,
Warm greetings from Australia. Jolly hot greetings actually; yesterday was a scorcher; I could barely keep my Pimm’s cold enough for long enough to avoid total meltdown.
Dave, the main thrust of my mixture today is inbound business tourism, expos and their importance to the British economy. As you know, these Australians have stolen the march on us in the printing space and successfully merged their trade associations and by default the Printex and PacPrint trade expos with what they call Visual Impact; creating a worrying stability in the frequency of these events and therefore the cost burden on exhibiting firms. As if the Rugby World Cup and One Day series were not enough eh?! Ah well, at least we have the Ashes…for now.
Imagine my chagrin on learning that IIR, owners of Ipex (the international print show I tried so hard to promote here) are re-teaming up with Picon, the trade association and zipping back up the M40 a year early in 2017 to Birmingham’s NEC and billing itself as a UK-only show with one hall! We all know Ipex 2014 at London’s ExCeL Centre was a bit of a fizzer but we still managed a good inbound showing from here and that other place across the Tasman Sea (name escapes me). Bit down on the 1,000-odd who used to go but not bad considering our friends across the Rhine have ceased being decent chaps about scheduling.
Now I know IIR might like back some of their twelve million-or-so quid they paid Picon for Ipex, but is this the way to accomplish that?
I’ll really miss the Ipex ANZ barbecues organized by yours truly. What am I to do? Host them next to the Rhine? Have you ever tried doing an authentic Aussie BBQ with pork knuckles and knackwurst? Here’s a photo to remind you of what once was…
Not only that but those bright young things from Print Monthly magazine who started The Print Show at the NEC, which opened today your time, had already announced their next 2 shows in ’16 and ’17 – clashing with Ipex in the same month! I mean, Dave, how many print expos can a Koala bear? (hint: a colloquialism I picked up over here, chuckle-chuckle!)
It’s making us look a bit doo-dally old boy. Skew-whiffy, you know, a couple of Pimm’s short of a garden party.
Do you think you could have a word with these IIR, Picon and Print Monthly chaps and tell them to get together and sort out the bally mess? I mean it’s bad enough seeing Ipex go down the gurgler as an international show, but to have two shows in the same month at the same place?
And we’ve just had the Düsseldorf people over here shouting the printing industry free drinks at the Opera House and inviting all to visit Drupa next June. The queue stretched from Bennelong Point to Wollongong! (think London to Brighton). They even had Brünhilde, Queen of the Valkyries as the novelty act! I’ve never seen such juggling and trapeze work.
Where did it all go wrong Dave? One minute we’ve got a rip-roaring trade show pulling thousands of visitors from the old Empire and next minute – nothing but a domestic one-haller that will be lucky to get any of the major exhibitors interested. Worst of all, the Germans are laughing at us. We did better against the Dorniers, Junkers and Fokkers.
Cynthia and I are looking forward to catching up with you and Sam next June at Drupa – hope you can make it. I will be with the Aussie contingent of course; my citizenship application should be through by then.
Toodle-pip!
Gerald