EVENT

Back to Nuremberg

Text: Jakub Nademlejnský

After a long two-year hiatus caused by the COVID

epidemic, the Eduard team was back to the

Nuremberg Toy Fair once again. The event took

place from February 1 to 5 and was held in sixteen

halls of the local trade fair center.

It has to be said right at the beginning that

this year fair was different from the previous

ones. There were significantly fewer

exhibitors. In our market segment of plastic

model kits, the fingers of just two hands

would be enough to count the participants.

However, count me in – Eduard/Special

Hobby, Italeri, Tamiya, Revell, Airfix. What

else? Let’s add to the credit the Art Scale

Kit distributor and Zvezda, which had

a stand in one of the tucked away booths

due to the organizers’ restrictions

against Russian companies. Any others?

No, nobody else. Other companies from

our business chose a more economical

option and came only to have a look and

go round the stands. And more than we

expected stopped at our stand. Among

them, even those we hadn’t counted on

beforehand. Others didn’t come at all.

For example, representatives from China,

USA and Ukraine were missing, and the

representation from Poland was also quite

weak.

But no wonder. The situation is not rosy,

so many companies have opted for

low-profile and very economical forms

of participation. We also

chose a more economical

option than in the past, and

as more attentive readers

may have noticed above, we

joined forces with a friendly

company, Special Hobby,

reducing our stand to only

two-thirds of its former size.

Of course, this led to more

intensive

communication

with our colleagues from Special Hobby, so

we were able to discuss further possible

cooperation on future projects. However,

when more visitors arrived at one point,

the booth was a bit tight ... Nevertheless,

we handled it without any problems. We

also split our team into two parties and

rotated with our colleagues after three

days at the fair. Saving money is necessary

nowadays!

If you have not attended this fair in person

in the past, I guarantee you would be

impressed anyway. It’s a huge event, with

2,843 exhibitors from 70 countries taking

part this year, and over 62,000 visitors from

136 countries visiting the fair over five days.

Jan Zdiarský and Vladimír Šulc

Alfred Riedel and Vladimír Šulc

20

INFO Eduard

But something in the mood was simply

missing. Talking to other people in the

industry, it was clear that they had mixed

feelings about attending. As the number

of exhibitors in the industry dwindles, the

importance of the event for us and others

is diminishing, and if the situation does not

improve, we would at least be very hesitant

to decide on participation in future years.

However, as usual, there was a silver lining.

In this case, thanks to the low participation

of the companies from our business,

we were able to conduct more intensive

negotiations with visitors to our stand.

Several very pleasant meetings took place

in a friendly atmosphere with companies

Jan Bobek and David Francis

(Phoenix Scale Publications)

March 2023