At the end of April this year, I penned a blog that asked if Solar Expos might be in danger of digging their own graves. Having just returned from the EU PVSEC event in Valencia, I thought it would be good to re-visit that question…
As it happens, EU PVSEC was a very good show for DEK Solar. But that doesn’t mean it was a very good show in its own right. It wasn’t.
In my view, there are two significant factors that made the event successful for us.
First, we planned our participation well in advance, distributed plenty of timely and well-targeted pre-show communications materials and – most importantly – built a diary stuffed full of appointments with key customers, prospects, industry influencers and the media. That’s always our strategy but this time it made the difference between abject failure and acceptable success. Our booth was always busy with back-to-back meetings. In contrast, the show aisles were not busy. ‘Footfall’, as it’s called, was way down on last year’s event in Hamburg and the previous show in Valencia in 2008. Quite simply and quite noticeably, less people attended.
Second, the DEK Solar brand is now relatively well established in the solar marketplace. By launching the new Eclipse platform with all its modular and field-scalable attributes at Valencia, we attracted even more attention and were rewarded with a great deal of interest. Another reward that can’t be overlooked is our second consecutive Solar Industry Award, presented to us at the show. Recognition from the industry and awards programmes is extremely satisfying for me, as it wasn’t that way back in 2008 when we appeared to many people to be the new kids on the block!
So awareness of the DEK Solar brand, our focused expertise and unique product range, and our strategy to commit people ahead of time to visiting our booth rather than hope they drop by made the difference in a show that struggled to deliver on many other levels.
I’m not sure what the full issue is with EU PVSEC’s decreasing ability to attract visitors. As shows go, it’s no upstart. This was its 25th year. My colleague and DEK’s global marketing director Karen Moore-Watts believes that Valencia is not an easy city to reach. And that wouldn’t help. But more fundamentally we both believe, as I said in my April blog, that there are too many shows and publications trying to cash in on the mushrooming solar sector.
We’ve seen this before in other market sectors. Too many shows means that visitors get spread more thinly. And a lack of visitors ultimately makes exhibiting unjustifiable. It seems that exhibition organisers are still not taking a holistic view of their market or considering the needs of an international marketplace and international customers. I’ve witnessed the results of this type of short-termism and it’s not a happy scenario for event organisers or publishers. As equipment vendors and expertise providers to the sector, we take a long term view of the market, our products and our competitors, and structure ourselves accordingly to prosper. With a 41-year track record behind DEK, it’s probably good advice.
- Darren Brown, Alternative Energy Business Manager.
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