Machine tool show - assessing the realities

Was the UK's MACH 2006 exhibition successful? - Yes, according to promoters and exhibitors alike, but Steve Halson for one would like to bring it all into prospective.

Steve Halson, director, Mid-Bucks Machine Tools in Chinnor, UK, said it is now two months since the passing of MACH 2006.

As a participator in this prime manufacturing event for metal cutting supply companies I have become nothing short of astounded at the degree of marketing hype surrounding this event.

Was it successful? Yes, according to promoters and exhibitors alike.

I for one would like to bring it all into prospective.

It was as ever well presented with exhibitors spending huge amounts of money not only on their stands but also in providing the necessary staff and infrastructure to support such an event.

The number of exhibitors had increased over MACH 2004 by some 9%.

However the numbers of UK manufacturers continue to decline.

Therefore the number of companies that were representing overseas manufacturers had increased.

It should be noted that overseas companies have a large budget to cover exhibitions because that is the way they like to do business.

Business in the UK is and always has been very different.

Therefore I believe a lot of the press hype is generated to justify the expense to the UK distributor's principals.

I have been amazed by the number of orders that were said to have been taken during the show.

While not disbelieving that the orders were placed at the show I think they were orchestrated, in the main, to be closed at that point to raise the perceived success.

That is many if not all of the orders placed would have been won anyway without an exhibition.

With today's capital assets high value and high technology, customers take a great deal of time from prospective interest to order placement.

Witness the size of many sales professional's pipe line in the previous years trading.

We all had good enquiry levels but I suspect that each enquiry would have been counted several times since that is the nature of an exhibition.

The prospective customers of today are, in general, better informed than many sales people.

This is certainly due to the wealth of information available through the internet.

The number of visitors at Mach 2006 has been put at 22,800.

I am old enough to remember the 1970's and 1980's - when we were disappointed if we achieved less than 10,000 visitors a day.

I seem to remember the first day of Mach 2006 was very poor with exhibitors very nearly outnumbering visitors.

Room for improvement there then, or perhaps it should be a three day event.

The quality of enquiries was said in many press releases to be high.

With respect to my fellow professionals the quality of enquiry cannot be ascertained until four to six weeks after the event.

It may be longer given the closeness to the holiday period.

Here are some examples of the gaining of enquiries at the exhibition.

One company was swiping the visitor's badge of everyone that walked passed his stand.

No doubt he won an award for the most enquiries but I would question the quality.

A positive answer to: 'Can I send you a brochure Sir?' seemed to count as an enquiry.

However a qualified question of: 'Will you be buying a machine of this type and value in the next 6 months?' did limit the enquiry level on my stand but the quality level should be high.

However, the quantity may not satisfy many managing directors or overseas principals.

On another point I am often surprised by is the number of companies in the machine tool world that have a sales and marketing director/manager.

I would have thought that these are two totally different facets within a business.

How many companies would have a sales and production director? And how interesting would the board meeting be with one director continually arguing with himself? Perhaps this is the reason for the elevated hype about the success of the exhibition with everybody putting their marketing hat on.

Two months on and approaching the holiday period, the sales hats have come out along with the long faces at sales meetings.

Explanations being probed for dropping of sales levels and the increasing sales pipelines! So, was I disappointed with Mach 2006? Not a bit of it.

It was a successful show as an ideal opportunity to meet existing customers, overseas distributors, and many new prospects.

Most importantly of all it was an opportunity to show the precision engineering and manufacturing world the wide selection of metal cutting solutions on offer from our particular machine tool manufacturer.

What it wasn't for us and never will be is a sound investment that would return its marginal cost over the five days it was held.

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