Trade shows aren’t necessary, but they are a nice way of getting validation for products and people.
I say this, because The Commercial Vehicle Show in Birmingham has just drawn to a close and I left it with mixed feelings.
First the positives. I would say the show was more interesting than in recent years and there was an impressive number of “headliners” with a world debut of the Isuzu D-Max EV, European show debuts for the Kia PV5 and Farizon SV and the slightly confusing double act of not only the Flexis software defined vehicles but also their Renault equivalents.
It felt like a busier show too. The throngs of people awaiting the unveiling of the Kia PV5 showed that new products from big brands can still draw a crowd.
I’ll gloss over that a high percentage of the audience members who were wearing Kia pin badges or had lanyards showing they were from Kia dealers, but it made the event feel genuinely special. A show debut that went off with a lot more than a muffled PA announcement or a muted ripple of applause that even the smallest meeting in a village hall could out-muster.
There’s a lot more to the Kia PBV project than some shiny new vans too, so it was good to hear Kia's sales ambitions for the UK. Modest. Realistic. Sensible.
More importantly, they’ve got 50 dealers who seem genuinely excited to be along for the ride - if the show turnout was anything to go by.
What were the negatives then? And why then do I think trade shows aren’t necessary.
On a personal level, the downside to all the razzmatazz was that I got very little chance to see or speak to some of the smaller exhibitors. That’s partly my fault, but also due to the fact that everyone I’d hoped to speak to were at the reveals. I therefore never made it to their stands, I simply saw them while looking at a Kia, or a Flexis.
That’s a shame because in hindsight I feel like I’ve probably missed some of the new emerging kit that you sometimes unearth. On the other hand, maybe I saved a few hours.
That aside, looking around I couldn’t help but think that this moment in time was very transitory. Motor show attendance across the world is dwindling.
Trade shows are a vital part of any industry, but all of the models on display had been seen before. There were no genuine surprises - that’s despite Isuzu insisting that they couldn’t tell me what was under the covers, knowing full well that I knew it was an electric pickup version of the D-Max.
The rigmarole, the time and the expense of a motor show, to see things (in my case that I’ve already driven) but even products that have been launched online months before somehow seems irrelevant. Prompting me to think maybe these trade shows aren’t necessary after all.
