I was in Hanover, Germany last week for the largest flooring show in Europe, Domotex.
Hanover is a decent looking northern German town that has really grown up over the past 20 years since it became a destination for large trade shows. I actually back-packed around Europe as a 19 year old one summer with a great buddy of mine (Jim Bjorkes: now a radio personality in Vancouver). We somehow ended up wandering the streets of Hanover, completely lost, poor and hungry.
Who would have thought that 19 years later I’d be posting video blogs from a Hanover trade show!
Here are two videos I took while at the Show. It is very tricky to take video at a trade show because many of the exhibitors are launching new lines. I guess they are concerned about competitors capturing secret information.
The first video is an overhead view of Hall 9.
I had to find a location that no one would yell at me for videoing their booth.
The second video is from the floor of hall 7, probably the busiest hall of the show (most of the large laminate flooring suppliers are there). The crazy thing about Hanover Domotex is that rather than exhibitors offering coffee or soft drinks, they primarily offer visitors beer. Yah, beer! And not the cheap stuff either; great quality Belgium & German beer.
From what I can deduct the beer starts flowing at 10am, but most of it doesn’t come out until later in the day. I have an affection for Leffe, a great beer from Belgium, and the second video shows me in a flooring magazines booth (set up to look like a European pub) drinking a glorious pint of Leffe.
Believe it our not, even with beer present, it was an incredibly busy show for me. We arrived for the opening and stayed until they kicked us out. So many booths to see in a 2 day time period. Laminate, hardwood, engineered, bamboo, cork, exotic decking, moldings, stone, tile, vinyl, adhesives, etc. This doesn’t include a massive amount of carpet, which is half of the show.
BuildDirect has several Europe factories that we deal with, and I was attending the show to keep an eye open for more. I’ve been to the show 4 of the last 5 years, so a lot of what I am doing is extended due diligence, harvesting relationships and patiently seeing what may emerge. We’ve been doing this for a decade and expect to be doing it for many more, so we really take a long term approach to finding great factory partners.
A PDF ‘End of Show’ report from the Domotex website can be seen here.
And here’s a quote from that report:
“At approximately 38,000, attendance was down – as expected – compared with last year’s event, which had been staged under significantly more favorable market conditions. There was virtually unanimous agreement among the show’s 1,394 exhibitors, however, about the high quality of leads generated in Hanover. “Any crisis also creates a wealth of new opportunities.”
I agree with that statement… the market is much smaller but the opportunities remain high. Great companies need to find a way to make it through these extreme, extreme economic times and explosive growth awaits us on the other side.
Take care,
Rob
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Great blog Robbie! Has it been almost 20 years since we last terrorized Northern Europe? Oh how times have changed… wait a second.. I’m still totally lost, poor and hungry.
great.
way to rub it in.
are you hiring?
Tough work!
Thanks Jim…. yah, it is shocking almost 20 years have gone by. I was looking out some old photos, you were wearing an old batman shirt, think it was the summer of the first Batman movie. Wow, after 4 months of backpacking I really grew to dislike that shirt, was that the only one you wore that trip??
Tell me about it Bill… you think the show was tough, you should have seen how tough it was drinking in Dublin Inn each night! http://www.irishpub-hannover.de/