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On studying trade fairs

Skrevet: 30.04.2009 | Forfatter: | Comments Off

A few weeks ago I visited the “leading” fair on “The bathroom experience”, ISH. This was for our research project DACS, where we are not only studying cottages as locales of leisure energy consumption but also: bathrooms. Instead of blaming the lazy end-user or the evil salespeople we are looking for choices affecting energy consumption which happen on every link of the commodity chain. We expected trade fairs to be a locales where some of these links surface and can be studied.

And it was an overwhelming experience, indeed. I felt like for the first time in my life I see capitalism in action: Men with suits (women with suits too, but more often women with objectifying outfits, remember, it was about “The bathroom experience”) from all over the world (well, mostly China and Europe) meet in an artificial environment (think: airport or similar non-places) in order to profit from each other (or rather fleece each other?).

I guess the cottage fair we will visit and study here in Trondheim next week won’t be as obvious an example for global capitalism (perhaps more for the cozy Scandinavian version of it), but here are some lessons I have learned in Frankfurt, for the public benefit:

  1. Don’t eat steak tartare the day before the fair. My friend Mario really meant well but my stomach did not appreciate the gift and so I had to endure thousands of men with suits (and women in swimsuits)  walking around with an upset stomach. Luckily it was a bathroom fair ;-)
  2. Don’t walk around watching, thinking smart thoughts. It is true, there is so much to see, but the salespeople are really happy to show all that to you. And that is what you are after: how they present things, aren’t you?
  3. Go for people who have stakes in what they are presenting. (Large) Fairs hire people to do the talking (and selling). These puppets are not what you are looking for, find the old owner, the sales veteran or the chief engineer.
  4. Don’t forget your business cards. All in all it is weird that you are at the fair, studying it. When you explain to the salespeople what you do, a business card really helps.
  5. Collect brochures and stuff, but do so wisely and selectively. During the three days in Frankfurt I collected some 20 kg. I managed to take about half of it with me to Norway — which has been lying peacefully in a corner of my office since.

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