How FESPA both innovated and motivated

FESPA 2010 was a reassuring moment of motivation for an industry which has undergone a wide range of subjective and objective questioning since the financial markets were plunged into cold water. Processes, suitability for purpose, variety of applications, the environmental challenge and the lack of young people in the industry are all subjects that need addressing, and FESPA’s mixture of debates, presentations, summits and seminars seemed purposed to do just that.

What FESPA does well, though, is to manage its size properly. The nature of a trade exhibition is that you never end up seeing all the people you wished to, nor all the new products, or indeed attending the horizon-expanding symposia on offer. If you stay for the duration there is easily enough to entertain you throughout, while single-day visitors will have time to reach all the companies they need to see, as well as dip into less familiar territories. The layout of the Munich Messe helped no end with its sensible structure and good facilities, as did easy access to both the airport and the city centre.

2010 was my first edition of the show without any particular agenda. Usually, as an industry editor, there is a long list of stakeholders to see and tick off and, inevitably, a couple of them are always left out. This time, though, my duties were split between gathering resources for my own freelance activities and Line 12’s PR clients, all of whom reported an exciting show with plenty of lead generation.

Curiously, though, I don’t feel that I saw anything particularly new (perhaps due to dashing around and being less observant than usual), but instead witnessed a market vibrant with optimism. Ipex set the tone, in a way, with many commercial printers making early signs of wanting to adopt wide-format kit in order to penetrate various advertising and display markets. Whether or not these converted into visitors at FESPA, the industry seemed stable and committed to adapting, and FESPA provided both the platform and the inspiration for that to happen.

It is difficult to populate peripheral activities but the debates, talks and discussions were well attended and not just by the same old faces, but visitors whose primary interest was in screen-printing or garment production who wanted to access new markets. I think this is the fortuitous and concluding point of my FESPA experience: accessing vertical markets and the need to innovate. This latter point was identified by the FESPA team some time ago and served as a strong banner under which to hold the show, but there was a genuine sense of profitability and thinking outside the box which can only stand the industry in good stead.