Being, nothingness and trade shows
28 March 2012Paris is a city that offers a vast range of different attractions, romance and adventure, fine food and wine, great art and architecture. Another of its attractions is as the birthplace of the modern intellectual, the place where people like Sartre and Camus, Baudrillard and Foucault, asked essential questions about humanity's place in the world,; how do we understand the world around us? How do we justify our actions? Why are we here?
That last question is one a lot of us are going to be asking in Paris this April, as we attend and exhibit at Intermat. The French show continues to take its place in the cycle of spring shows, alongside Bauma in Munich and ConExpo in Germany. As we've argued here before though, that structure and Intermat's place in it looks increasingly hard to justify. At least one big crane manufacturer, Manitowoc, won't be there; they tell us they would rather focus their attention this year on regional shows and their own events.
Today, Western Europe is taking longer than the rest of the world to recover from the global financial crisis, and the Eurozone still stumbles close to the brink of collapse. Crane sales in the region have not picked up to the same extent as elsewhere. Emerging markets, on the other hand, like China, Brazil and India, are growing rapidly.
Why then should Europe have two shows every three years, the US only one, and Asia and the rest of the world none at all? A more sensible structure, I think, would be for the construction industry's global players to focus their big annual product releases on a cycle that took into account these new markets; say North America, China, Europe, and India or Brazil, over a four year cycle.
That doesn't mean there isn't a place for Intermat. But, it would be better to focus less on being everything for everyone, to being a specialist show for their own country and region. Intermat has a strong track record in attracting visitors from North Africa. As this market rebounds from turmoil and begins to be able to develop free from the weight of kleptocracy and dictatorship, the next Intermat should build on that success.
This year though, expectations will be low. Crane buyers are still cautious in Europe. Crane manufacturers are struggling with the changes required by a new set of engine emissions regulations. At least one head of mobile crane design tells me that his entire engineering team have spent the last year fine-tuning their cranes to make room for bigger engines, stifling their ability to innovate. Let's hope the product launches and deals made this year exceed those expectations.
Will North
