Ideal Home – again

Well, the Ideal Home Show was interesting, to say the least. Lots of ideas have been forthcoming, and it looks like a bit of website business may be on the way too. Some surprise was expressed that I was prepared to find some business while out on a fun day “off”, but well, what the hell, spot an opportunity and exploit it – that’s my theory, and I’m sticking with it.

I didn’t get any photos, unfortunately, but the place was so frigging busy I wasn’t going to be able to get much that didn’t involve having people scattered all over, which really wasn’t the mood I was going for. So yeah, no photos.

But we did have a good time – the logic of the layout is completely beyond me, sticking all the fancy guff on the ground floor, then having all the demonstrations upstairs in the narrower parts where people, by nature, stop and watch, thus blocking the entire fucking walkway. Genius. I’d like to find the person who came up with that concept and give them a bloody good kicking – and I can’t be the only one. I figure it must affect the sales and demonstrations too, because unless you can get people passing through fairly quickly you’re only going to see a percentage of any day’s custom, rather than all of it. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I were exhibiting there, it would be an issue that would piss me off. Paying God only knows how much to exhibit there (and let’s not forget it’s near as dammit a month of being there!) and yet probably missing a fair percentage of potential sales would certainly be a cause for being pissed off.

Anyway, that aside, it was actually a really good day. I wouldn’t say that anyone should go every year, or anything like that, but it’s definitely worth going. Hell, even just with balancing the cost of food (definitely take your own lunch, it’ll save you a shedload!) and drinks against the freebies we got, I’d say we probably broke even. And with the potential for some work, I probably came out well ahead of the game! Always a good thing…