As highlighted in this week’s briefing, and the subsequent pages on the show deals and product launches Ipex, if you disregard comparisons with previous years, it was an unmitigated success.
However, if you were the event owner and were committed to a 100,000m2 venue, but only needed 40,000m2 of gross space – ‘success’ probably wouldn’t be the word that you would choose to put after ‘unmitigated’.
However, that would be to do the Ipex team a disservice. Against all the odds, it was a good show – but it was a very different show.
Ipex can survive, but it will probably need to evolve again – the problem is: evolve how? Does the duration need to change again? What about the frequency? Should there even be a change of location for every cycle?
But I guess the first question should be: does Informa, which paid circa £12m only eight years for the show, have the stomach to start over?
Four years is a long time in the event world, and a lot can change between now and 2018. However, the international visitors are unlikely to forget that they possibly spent longer travelling to and from the event than they actually did on the show floor. Equally, the no-show exhibitors that lost their deposits aren’t going to forget that in a hurry either.
But then I hope they don’t forget that those companies that did exhibit, even if they scaled back to a footprint that mirrored their deposit, had a great show and the visitors that did attend hopefully got something out of their visit irrespective of their journey.
Will Ipex happen in 2018? Right now, I’m not sure. But I hope so. I really hope so.
