Seminars

There were also several new additions this year, such as the educational seminars, which were hugely popular, attracting hundreds of visitors during the three days. Topics ranged from making the most of your embroidery software to growing a business with heat printing.

Robin Bull from Target Transfers, which helped co-ordinate the "Growing a business with heat printing" seminar by Mel Meibers, said feedback from the seminar was very positive.

"Visitors were mostly new to the industry and found the content extremely helpful," he said. "One visitor said to me ‘I have been searching everywhere to try and find somebody who could explain heat printing to me, and this seminar was the only source of genuine information I could find in the whole of the UK'."

He added: "Others told me that they revisited the seminar to make notes as they had found the presentation so helpful! We were glad to be able to help those looking to join the industry as we believe that education is the key to a successful business."

So popular were the seminars, both with visitors and speakers, that plans are already in place to expand the seminar suite and programme for next year.

Quality

Stand design was again of a very high quality and most exhibitors said they felt the quality of enquiries was also very high this year, which we hope is a reflection of the magazine's ongoing circulation and pre-show publicity work. Again, work is already underway to improve this further for next year. One of the most interesting things to note is that 77% of people who visited this year didn't attend the show last year - making them potential new customers for the exhibitors and further illustrating the growth of the event, as well as the need for it to remain annual not bi-ennial.

Thanks

The exhibition team, in particular the manager Richard Smith, would like to thank all the visitors and exhibitors for making the event such a success and securing its return next year. Thanks also go to Golden Finishes for supplying the colourful exhibition bags, and to Blue Max Stag for providing the fleeces and polo shirts worn by ticket registration staff, as well as the badge lanyards. And of course a big thank you goes to the seminar speakers: Brendan Prazner of Wilcom International, Patrick McGuiness of Sawgrass Technologies and Mel Meibers from Great Garment Graphics. We are also grateful to the Garment Decoration Awards judges: Glynn Denton from Victory Design, Stuart McCarthy from Top Banana, and Tony Whitmore from DV Digital.

Finally, as ever, we would like to thank Jeannie Frith and the models for all their hard work in putting the fashion shows together, and Xpres for producing the plaques for the Garment Decoration Awards (details on page 38).

Next year's exhibition takes place in Hall 9 at the NEC from March 1st to 3rd.

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