SFFF 2011 Update

I must be getting old – 4 days at Speciality Food Show and I was completely exhausted for the rest of the week.  It was a big event for Cotswold Fayre this year with over 50 suppliers at the show which does, of course, vastly increase the amount of visitors to our stand.  In fact this show we see as being the key one of the year, so much so it is a condition of our taking on new brands that they exhibit at Speciality and Fine Food Fair in their first year with us at least.

As usual even from lunchtime on the first day I was being asked “How is the show for you?” – 3 hours into it I am not sure is a good time to judge it!!  By the end of the show I must have been asked THAT question at least 50 times – and my answer generally gets shorter and shorter as I get bored with answering it, ending up with “Ask me in three months’ time.”  I have banged on about this before, but it is amazing how some exhibitors think that the show is over on Tuesday at 5:00 pm, when actually that is the time the real work starts – as my sales team are only too aware!

For us as a wholesaler the key to making any show work is by working in partnership with our suppliers at the show.  Some understand partnership, and others, would you believe, don’t even come and say hello to us during the show.  Taking our business forward, partnership is becoming more and more important.  When I started the business in 1999, the speciality food sector was very young, small and innocent (no pun intended).  Now the sector is a lot more crowded with many similar brands competing for space on the shelves of farm shops, food halls and delicatessens.  To grow sales of a brand (without going to a supermarket) requires a clear strategy and marketing and we believe a key wholesaler with which to work.

To this end we are hosting this coming Wednesday the inaugural Cotswold Fayre Supplier’s Conference, to which we have over 100 suppliers booked in to come.  There are presentations from members of the Cotswold Fayre team, suppliers and a customer. The main aim it to understand what working in partnership actually means in practice. More next week, I don’t want to spill the beans too much!

I did get the opportunity to talk to Paul Da Costa Greaves at SFFF – I don’t think he knew I had blogged about his appearance on Dragon’s Den the week before.  He did tell me that he only went on the show for PR purposes and thought that he was close to getting investment, so added an extra nought onto his loss figures for the previous year, changing them from £10,000 to £100,000!!  If true I am not sure what kind of PR this was?

The summer is most definitely over, what there was of it, so I can now say, “Have a great autumn”.