A short overview of this year's Spring Fair & Nuremberg Toy Fair 2015

Stand Decor by Fiona & Rodney Fisher

The NEC Birmingham, England has been the host of Spring Fair since 1976. Spring Fair is Europe's leading presentation of gift and home products and the largest trade exhibition in the UK. From 1st February to 5th February 2015, Qualatex proudly wowed customers with fantastic displays of balloons and decor along with with their fantastic range of balloons and accessories, and introduced many new and exciting products for 2015. 

Qualatex have been exhibiting at Spring Fair for 20 years and I have been part of the Qualatex Spring Fair team for quite a few of those years. It is truly a team effort that makes the stand look so impressive, which we know is very important for visiting guests and prospective customers.

This years stand decor was designed and created by Fiona & Rodney Fisher with the help from the Pioneer Europe team! The colours and design were awesome, impressive giant flowers and garlands using Caribbean Blue, Wild Berry with a hint of 'Fashion' Rainbow Super Agates was simply stunning and stood out from all the other trade stands!

Here's what one of our customers said:

"The stand was beautiful. It was vibrant , colourful , fresh and created alot of ideas to work with in our own business . The spongebob display was a great idea for childrens parties , the pink champagne bottle is a perfect product to add to the hen section or just a girls night out or party , I think it will be a great success . '"- Sonya from Partyworld, Ireland

The great thing about attending a show like this is that there is so much on offer. Not only can you visit your favourite suppliers and find new ones, you get to see firsthand all the great new products that will be available during the year. 

There are great demonstrations and seminars including The Stage where Keith Stirman, Dominic Cassidy and myself presented a range of designs using some of the fantastic new Qualatex balloons, including the beautiful new Wedding Butterfly that adorned both stands! 

After I had finished my stint working at the eduction centre on the Qualatex stand, I took the opportunity to walk around a few of the other exhibition halls. I always like to see what's exciting and new in other markets, especially if I feel that it might be the next big thing that can be used with balloons. You also get the opportunity to see the latest trends too! I discovered some other great seminars going on and was lucky enough to sit in on an e-commerce seminar 'Secrets for e-commerce success', which I found really informative and picked up some really great tips. I think that next year I will try and plan to attend a variety of the seminars especially some of the more creative one's such as display techniques and creative gift wrapping which I feel would be very beneficial in our industry.

Every year Spring Fair and the International Toy Fair in Nuremberg, Germany run almost at the same time giving International customers the opportunity to attend both shows - which many do! Once again, the Qualatex stand was beautifully decorated with very elegant and eye-catching decor created by Luc Bertand with a little help from the Pioneer Europe export team.

Stand Decor by Luc Bertrand

Spielwarenmesse International Toy Fair Nürnberg, Germany is the largest international trade fair for toys and games held annually since 1949. Only trade visitors associated with the toy business, journalists and invited guests are admitted.








Here is a short presentation of photographs from both the Spring Fair and International Toy Fair.

Michelle Commerford, Head of Sales and Marketing at Pioneer Europe shared her thoughts on this year's shows.

"Nuremberg Toy Fair and Spring Fair International have been exceptionally good for us this year. The 2015 Qualatex Everyday Catalogue (European Version) is 40 pages heavier and all the new products have received great feedback from our customers. It was nice to catch up with old friends and see how their business is doing, as well as meeting new customers and help them start in the balloon business." 

To download a copy of the latest European Qualatex  2015 Everyday Catalogue CLICK HERE

Both Spring Fair and the International Toy Fair are trade shows that are exclusive to trade customers only. To attend either of these shows you need to pre-register, so why not register today for 2016!

Happy Ballooning!

Sue Bowler

www.suebowler.com

Building the Titanic... an incredible project!

2012 is a year filled with landmark celebrations and events such as The London Olympics and Paralympics, the Queens Diamond Jubilee and the 100th Anniversary of the Titanic! 

This is a year when many of us can take advantage of these celebrations and offer exciting and unique decor...

I am very excited, I have been asked to be part of the team that will rebuild the Titanic... but this time totally out of balloons, approx. 14,000 give or take a few!

Fiona Fisher CBA

Fiona Fisher CBA of Worldwide Balloon Decor with her husband and business partner Rodney were approached 4 months ago by Victoria Square, shopping centre, Belfast, Ireland, to create a balloon sculpture of the iconic ship TITANIC! Just a few hundred yards away from Victoria Square is the slipway where the Titanic was originally built and launched from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in 1911. The Titanic's first maiden voyage was on the 10th April 1912 and then tragically sank only 5 days later on the 15th April 1912!

Fiona said "I am really looking forward to the challenge of building the Titanic in Victoria Square, Belfast, as it's so close to where Titanic was originally built.
 All of my projects have to be thoroughly researched, but there is a special pride in this one. Now that I have discovered the amazing skills of the people who built Titanic, I dedicate this project, as a tribute to them, the great ship building empire that we once had in Northern Ireland and to all those who lost their lives on the fate-full maiden voyage. When the public see our scaled down model of Titanic and study all of the background information in Victoria Square, I think a lot of them will be surprised as to how enormous this magnificent ship really was".

Rodney Fisher

The frame will be built in Portadown during March and transported to Victoria Square on the 1st of April, ready for the balloons to be added by the rest of the team... that's me and John (I think they call it a busman's holiday)!!

Rodney is really pleased to be involved in this particular project as Titanic has a special place in history, not just in Northern Ireland but in many countries around the world.

"I know that lots of people from all around the globe will be watching our progress and I hope we can give them an insight into how we go about creating a balloon sculpture of this scale and size".

So what does it take to create such an awesome balloon sculpture? As with all sculptures that Fiona and Rodney build, a great deal of research as taken place. Rodney studied the fabulous book "Titanic the ship magnificent" and spent a significant time doing further research on the internet.

 "We can only use round balloons (Qualatex of course) to build the sculpture. Victoria Square is open on three sides and can have strong winds blowing through plus a large temperature fluctuations at this time of year".

Fiona & Rodney work extremely well as a team, Rodney designs the frames and Fiona works out how she wants the sculpture to look with the balloons added... sometimes an initial idea on how it will all fit together just doesn't work, so they allow plenty of time to play around with ideas so that they get as close as possible to the end result.

Rodney has kindly shared some of his working plans, I am in awe of the amount of pre-planning and designing that has already taken place!

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I will keep my blog up-to-date with progress on this project, and I will also give a day by day report when we are working on the project in April... along with many many photo's!

If you would like to read more about this amazing balloon project visit www.buildingtitanic.com

Do you have any exciting projects in the planning stages for 2012 that you would like to share within the balloon community... we would love to hear!

I will be looking at the other 2012 MILESTONE celebrations and share some of my ideas with you over the next few months!

Sue