Timber Expo's legacy

Can Timber Expo contribute to creating the market perception of UK timber plc as a cohesive, identifiable industry?

Rupert Scott: Run the show, make it successful for a couple of years and we and the outside world will believe that there is a strong, united timber industry.
But on the topic of competition within the industry, our view is: may the best person win. We’ve got all these different systems – glulam and cross-lam, native timber and standard timber frame and SIPs. They’ve all got unique selling points – just let the market decide.What will pull the crowds in will be new ideas and new products. All sectors have this internal competition.

Wendy Trott: That’s true, in the masonry sector Thermalite blocks, for instance, compete with concrete blocks.

Geoff Rhodes: Timber Expo is just one building block in the process of asking and answering “do we as an industry have a voice?”. It should help us feel we do now have some critical mass.

Is Timber Expo likely to get much media exposure and help generate it for the wider industry?

Rupert Scott: Timber Expo has lined up a media deal with Building and Building Design, which do a good job of hitting contractors and architects and engineers. I agree that you have to be in it for the long term. Our goal is that we make year one successful and by year three we’re really putting the wind up some other sectors. I know they’re watching what we’re doing.

David Venables: Timber products aren’t widely represented in the architectural design media, so there is a major benefit in being able to show them a hall full of products and make some contacts.

Camilla Hair: Awareness is very much the point. The lighting industry exhibition was a classic case in PR terms in that the financing for promoting lighting started to pour in once the media coverage from the initial exhibition had gone really wide. We went from having 10 journalists coming through the door to 50 or 60.

Do you expect Timber Expo to be a regular fixture. If so, how frequent should it be and should it stay in Coventry or move around different venues?

Bryan Crennell: I wouldn’t mind different locations. And I’m pleased it’s outside London; the world is not London-centric. Accsys has about 12 international shows booked and I’ve just come back from one in New Orleans focused on architects, which successfully rotates around different cities. And marketing budgets are set every year, so I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be annual.

David Venables: From my point of view architects are critical and we’ve got to deliver to them, so I am worried about Coventry as the venue. This will be one to watch. And initially it might be more sensible to do it every two years to build your energy up and maybe have some linked events between. But the potential is absolutely there and I’m totally behind the concept.

Tony Miles: For me it’s all about the customer focus so location doesn’t really matter to me. We’re committed to it – and beyond the first year.
I don’t think you can expect just one year to deliver excellence. It will be at the after show party that everyone decides what they got out of it, if it worked and what we have to do to make it work better next time.

Wendy Trott: I was also a little bit concerned about Coventry as the venue, and another concern is the length of the exhibition. We look at attracting customers to events by, for example, inviting them to dinner, and there are only two evenings to do that. But it is a good platform and a good start and we should all look to make it a success. I would go for a two-year cycle – and September, the opposite end of the calendar to Ecobuild, is the right time.