EXHIBITIONExhibiting.co.uk

The Scottish Ski and Snowboard Show will return to the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) following its successful launch at the venue last year. Organised by Capital Events, the show will take place from 15 to 16 October 2011. It joins several other consumer exhibitions that chose the SECC as their venue in 2011, including the Ideal Home Show Scotland and the Scottish Wedding Show. The Emigrate show, organised by JP Events and Exhibitions, will also return to the SECC for its fifth edition.The UK Wedding Shows will return to Manchester Central for three more years, after signing an extended contract with the venue. Organised by a company of the same name, The UK Wedding Shows will take place in October 2011 through 2014. Manchester Central has also won the annual conference and exhibition organised by the Chartered Institute of Housing and Ocean Media Group, who announced the move from Harrogate. The event will run from 12 to 14 June 2012 and will bring an estimated £2m to the city in business tourism.The Business Design Centre will host the launch edition of Informa's new print exhibition Cross Media 2012, which will run on 3 and 4 September. The exhibition will target printers looking to add new levels of service to their ink-on-paper core.Trafford Park-based EventCity hosted The X Factor's Manchester auditions. Filming took place from 12 to 14 June in front of an audience of 21,000.Excel London will host the launch of MCM Expo Group's Memorabilia show, which will run alongside the organiser's London Comic Con from 28 to 30 October 2011. The previous edition of the comic show brought 60,000 visitors to the London venue.Old Trafford held Clarion's Mortgage Business Expo Manchester in May. The show last ran in 2008 and was forced to cancel by the economic downturn of following years. Clarion hopes the one-day regional expo will run annually from now on. Meanwhile the next event in the series, Mortgage Business Expo London, will run on 16 and 17 November at London Olympia.Eurovet, organiser of textile and fashion trade shows held at Paris de Versailles every year, will run a new UK exhibition at Olympia. Due to take place on 7 and 8 November 2011, the Fast Fashion Tour will be the first overseas instance of Eurovet's fashion division's Fast Fashion Tour outside France.Aztec Event Services has won the contract to supply audiovisual equipment at the practical skills exhibition WorldSkills. The international competition comes to London for the first time, running at Excel in October. More than 150,000 visitors are expected.business clinicwww.exhibitionnews.co.uk 37WINNING BUSINESSVIrtUal IdEaA new virtual trade show named Vb2b is launching to give small businesses a chance to promote their products online. Vb2b organiser David Dresner is the director of Melton iT services, supplier of training and iT support for small to medium-sized firms. "i have always visited business exhibitions and found them to be beneficial, but as a small business the cost of exhibiting was prohibitive," said Dresner. Visitors to the virtual event hall register their details for free, which are then available to all the exhibitors. exhibitors can upload information and videos to their virtual stands, and visitors can download them to a virtual briefcase. They can man their stands remotely, interacting with visitors via instant messaging or video chat using a webcam. exhibitors will be charged on a sliding scale depending on the amount of features and information they want to host, which remains online for 90 days after the event. Vb2b's first event will focus on businesses in the north West of england from november 15 to 17, with a Yorkshire and Humber show lined up for spring 2012. "i am also looking at hosting sector-based shows for specific industries which would cover the whole country too," added Dresner.The good and The bad My best business decision was agreeing to sell The betting shop show to ATe (now part of clarion events) after 26 years. When i took it on, it was a small hotel event. When i sold it, the show had half a dozen satellite dishes on the roof and computers everywhere.However, the industry was going online and when i was approached by ATe, i realised they had the resources to develop the event. A few weeks before ATe ran its first event, a fire destroyed the venue, The national Motorcycle Museum in birmingham. The financial director rang to tell me that my timing had been impeccable. Ps: They moved it to The nec and doubled its size.My best decisionMy worst decision129The number of exhibition companies with sizeable cash reserves that are primed for acquisitions, according to new Plimsoll Research.My worst business decision was more about not doing something rather than making a bad decision. i failed to update a rather loose, 'friendly' contract between my company and a trade federation that sponsored a show i had created and introduced to them 10 years earlier. it was a sponsorship which saw them helping to promote our show and where we paid them a percentage.immediately after the tenth show, the trade federation wrote to say it was not sponsoring and were taking the show over. The show name was changed and with the main player in their pocket, they got away with it.Ps: They made a mess of it.PAUL webster, tHe webster PArtnersHiP