Five days of Euroshop are over. Five days #beatofretail. Five days of madness. For the first time without an exhibition stand. What do we have instead? A small easy-peasy space in hall 12. Not very spectacular, and a short #beatbox show with Fips and Simon every full hour. A #beatshuttle service for our guests, which was popular not only because of the bad weather and gave us the opportunity to have a personal chat in the car. And the #beatcafé on a vintage bus. A safe haven – for us as well as for our guests. A relaxed atmosphere, a cosy open fire, delicious coffee, laid-back people. The complete opposite, really, of the bustle of the exhibition in the trade fair halls.
An “anti-stand” in the hall and a “short retreat” away from the exhibition grounds. Chats with customers that appear to have little to do with acquisition – which is perhaps why they are perceived as particularly pleasant and intense. A trade fair presence that is not primarily about the trade fair. The converted bus strikes a nerve with our guests. Suddenly it’s not all about shopfitting, project management or prices. It’s not about business. Instead, it’s about experience, the special and the extraordinary. It comes as no surprise then that we were asked several times: Can we hire it for our event? For our party? Or for our trade fair?
And for us, that’s a wish come true: for the first time our “exhibition stand” will be reused and made useful again. There have been many times in the past that we carted material from Düsseldorf to Lake Constance, stored in somewhere, and then five years later threw it out anyway. The only thing that we will throw away this time is the black furniture, which is stretched across the bus like a rucksack. Five days of non-stop rain did not exactly improve it.
Jürgen Zahn, the owner of our company, summarises the trade fair as follows: It was different. Different than before, and different to all the other exhibitors. When I walked through the halls in Düsseldorf on the last set-up day I wasn’t sure if we did the right thing with our bold decision. We decided not to invest several hundred thousand euros this time only to file away perhaps a thousand or so business cards. And to bin the entire exhibition stand. We had fewer meetings with customers, but the ones we did have were great and the atmosphere was super cool; we earned lots of praise for our bus and I am now sure: different is better!
