Well, its finally FIT Show week, and exhibitors will be making their final last minute preparations today as the industry prepares to embark for the NEC on Tuesday morning. I cannot imagine how stressed some of the exhibitors will be. It seems there is always one or two companies cutting it majorly fine to be ready for when it all begins. Hopefully not this year!

As always, I will be there from Tuesday to Thursday, so it makes perfect sense to break down to you all how I’ll be covering the three days on DGB.

Live page

As always, I will be running a live page here on DGB where you will be able to keep up to speed with what is going on during the course of the exhibition. You can find the link to that page on the main menu, or you can click here to go right to it.

It’s something no one else does, but there are many thousands of people who will still not be able to attend, so I feel the live page facility is a great way to get an insight into what they key talking points and products are of the exhibition.

For the 2019 show I have used a new tool which will allow me to gather much more FIT Show related content on the page than just my own musings. I have linked my own Twitter feed, as well as filtered the #FITShow2019 hashtag so you can see all social media related stuff myself and others put out there. I will be of course posting regular, more in-depth updates throughout each day. There’s drinks on Tuesday night on the stands, so if I start to ramble you know why!

Daily reviews

At the end of each day I’ll be publishing a daily review of the main events and talking points. I’ll be highlighting my products of the day and the stands that stood out from the crowd. It won’t be the First Testament every night, simply a brief breakdown and what I thought was key during each day.

At the end of the week I’ll be publishing a full in-depth, detailed review of the whole thing. It will cover the products I’ve seen, the talking points raised, the quality and diversity of the stands, the organisation of the exhibition and everything else in between. That will be a long one, so feel free to keep that to one side for your weekend reading!

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Best stands and products

At the end of the exhibition I will be making my own judgements as to what I thought were the best stands and new products at the 2019 exhibition. I appreciate that there are awards for these things given out on Wednesday night at the Gala Dinner. But each year I feel some of the lesser known companies get less of a crack of the whip. For example, the stand for many a couple of shows back was the Truemans stand which resembled the Central Perk coffee shop from Friends. It was a superb idea and easily one of the most visited. That was stand of the year for me.

I’ll also be highlighting my product or products of the year. Each show I try to pick out a product from the crowd which really stands out for me. Obviously there are going to be many product launches this year, but sometimes the best ones are the ones already out there or simply improved versions of what is already good.

Themes

When you get thousands of industry people in a room, you get a lot of conversation. From that conversation you get themes. The subjects most people are talking about. What I’ll be on the look out for are the topics which get mentioned the most, which will give an indication as to what the industry is truly concerned about.

My hope is that the skills crisis, sustainability, recycling and product quality top that list. All things which I think we need to be addressing this very moment.

All in all, I hope you enjoy what I am able to bring you from the FIT Show over the course of this week. And if you’re going to be down there, please feel free to come say hello or tell me how wrong I am, either way, it will be nice to see you!

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