Memories from the National Boat, Caravan & Outdoor Show 2009
The NEC Birmingham
Mo and Dick Kingswell
As I remember, it was some time before Christmas 2008 that Eric Randle from Itchyfeet asked me if I would be prepared to take the Big Pitch Guide to the Caravan Show at the NEC, Birmingham in the February of 2009 where we could expect about 100,000 visitors during the six days the Show would be open. Over the past year Eric has tried to enlarge the Itchyfeet Show stand to form a one-stop-shop concept where a person interested in anything to do with RVs could find any and all of the answers they were looking for on the one stand rather than having to tour around many different stands within the Show.
The plan was to have one corner of the stand dedicated to “Pimp-my-Coach” where you could buy anything to do with enhancing your pride and joy coach, ranging from big boys toys such as a very sophisticated Sat-Nav to the best polishes, waxes and brushes on the market. Another corner was to be the Big Pitch Guide where we could tell you where in the UK or Europe you could park an RV if you bought one, a third corner was dedicated to a new concept “Rent my Rig” where you could discuss the hiring and staffing of an RV for any and every kind of corporate hospitality event you could imagine whilst the remainder of the stand was reserved to demonstrate any one of the four RVs that Itchyfeet had taken to display.
Many ideas were tossed into a brain-storming session as the design of the stand was thrashed out in detail – this was to be the biggest indoor Show that Itchyfeet had ever staged and Eric, naturally, wanted it to be top quality but based on a common sense value of overall cost – just getting the RVs and Staff there was cost enough, let alone hotel and food bills over the period of a week in Brum – and, of course, the very real possibility that nobody would attend the Show anyway due to the so-called recession and credit-crunch.
Mo and I set to producing sufficient Guides to suit the demand that we hoped would arise, at the same time as producing many new and updated pages for both Guides, two new Countries (Belgium and Switzerland) in the European Guide were just a starter – many BPG members had recently arrived back from Europe with amendments to existing pages as well as many, many new site reports and new site pages from UK members.
Christmas and the New Year flew by and suddenly we were into February and the Show was almost upon us, which was when my youngest son, Sean, decided to tell us that he had asked his long term partner to marry him – the ceremony to take place just a week before the Show in Birmingham. Then Eric asked us if we would be prepared to attend another Show, at the West Point arena in Exeter, just three days after we were expected back from Birmingham – we would need even more stock to take with us – pressure, what pressure – bring it on, we can handle it!
The Itchyfeet stand was positioned almost in the centre of Hall 4 at the NEC which meant that we had to get the RVs into the Hall before anybody else, so that the staff could continue to build the remainder of the stands around us. This actually meant that we would have to leave Cornwall on Sunday 15th February in order to be ready for the Show to open on Tuesday 17th – and we had to have the RVs clean and dry before we could move them into the Hall.
No sooner said than done, we departed at 4am with the intention of getting as close as we could to Birmingham before breakfast in order to miss the worst of the rush-hour traffic – and that is how it worked out, after a trouble-free journey we pulled into the NEC at around 10.30am and immediately proceeded to wash down the travel-stained RVs. All went well until one of the NEC traffic police pulled up and told us we were not allowed to wash the RVs down on site – that concession had apparently been sold to a private company and we heard later that they wanted to charge in excess of £150 to wash down each vehicle on that Sunday and £300 if they were to do it on the Monday – thankfully we had almost finished the job by then and they didn’t get a penny out of us! The RVs were hurriedly ‘leathered’ off and Michael was shunting them into place on the stand, which to our amusement was actually fully carpeted!
Over the next 36 hours every single member of the crew worked their socks off to get the RVs shining brightly and the stand looking in absolutely tip top condition – I seem to remember cleaning and polishing the outside windows of each of the four RVs and then found that the lights inside the Hall showed up that the insides needed cleaning as well – and I hate cleaning windows!
The Itchyfeet stand consisted of half a ‘square’ plot directly facing the Caravan Club entertainment area, with Stingray, another RV dealer, taking a third quarter and Dudleys taking up the final quarter – this meant that we had members of the public approaching us from three directions at once and Eric had warned us that this would be enough to keep all of us on our toes for the entire show – and so it proved to be, a very physically tiring show indeed!
Opening day dawned and we arrived on the stand to find it absolutely crowded before we were even due to open, it transpired later that the Caravan Club had arranged a very special early morning party for their members, starting with refreshments, a couple of speeches and then some form of quiz show attended by some very well known television personalities (at which point at least one photographer asked us if he could climb on top of one of the RVs in order to get some clear shots of those TV stars). After the quiz show finished, they cleared the stage and up stepped a guitar clad ‘pop’ group who immediately began belting out some kind of very, very loud music which seemed to go on forever. I love modern music but this was so loud that we simply could not hear ourselves talking – or what prospective customers were asking us and I have to admit that I was not looking forward to six consecutive days of that kind of ear-bashing! Secretly I appealed to Apollo, the Greek god of music, promising him whatever he required if only he could put an end to our torture – and although I will never know if he listened to me - just a few minutes later the band exceeded the limits and blew their speakers to shreds and suddenly wonderful peace and quiet wafted gently around us and stayed that way for the rest of the week.
I had invested in new trousers from Marks and Spencer for this show, where the sales-lady had persuaded me that I should have the latest design in pockets – known as coin-catcher pockets – and I defy anybody to prove any worse form of torture designed by any tailor down through the ages! These pockets consist of a small inner pocket sewn into the bottom corner of the standard pocket; the idea being that all of your loose change falls into these inner pockets in order to prevent the coins falling all over the floor when you hang the trousers up later in the day. That idea is perfectly fine and sensible but those inner pockets also manage to stop anybody with fingers shorter or fatter than a concert pianist from removing their loose change without the most excruciating contortions seen outside of a circus. Didn’t take me very long to attack those offending pockets with a pair of scissors, I assure you – I’d rather have coins all over the floor than break my fingers trying to extract the last 5p coin in a crowded supermarket queue. And talking of loose change, I happened to notice the price of a pint of luke-warm beer in the NEC - £3.10 a pint, now many of you may be fully aware of the price of a pint of beer in a pub but I rarely go out drinking and I was totally amazed, I assure you – mind you, it is rumoured that the last time I bought a round we still paid for it in the old style Pounds, shillings and pence and five star petrol was only 5 bob a gallon!
I’m sorry, I have digressed - so back to the Show – I mentioned that the Stingray stand backed onto us and they had quite a nice Hurricane on show at £75,000 together with a 38ft Pace Arrow (one full wall slide-out combined with a small slide in the opposite side of the bedroom) at around £130,000. Dudleys were positioned to one side of Stingray, also backing onto our stand and they had a very nice looking 39ft Itasca Meridian together with a 30ft triple slide Winnebago Aspect at a cool £95,000 – a bit ‘pricey’ you might think but the build quality appeared to be very high standard as, of course, we all expect from the Winnibago brand. Paul Rees discussed the 32ft ‘Avanti’ on show with Signature Motorhomes in the last issue and the Brownhills Stand with a Damon Daybreak 31ft twin slide priced at a very competitive £50k. Oakwell Motorhomes had a full wall slide 36ft Gulfstream at around £136k as well as a Gulf Stream 31ft twin slide at £126k and Tony James from Luxury Leisure Travel Trailers had a 31ft Cougar 5th wheel complete with Dodge Ram Truck on show together with an Aerolite Caravan which soon sported a sold sign. The last stand that I saw was RS Motorhomes who had a couple of nice looking vehicles, especially the one with a buggy emerging from the garage – very tidy solution to the A Frame or Trailer towing conundrum.
My first sale of the Show was quite memorable – I had spent some time explaining the merits of owning a copy of the Big Pitch Guide to a lovely young lady when she finally managed to get a word in edgeways to say that she actually didn’t want the Big Pitch Guide but she liked the canvas binder in which it came as a show special – and could she buy one of the binders by itself! I must have looked dumbstruck because at that time the rest of the staff on the stand collapsed in gales of laughter - later in conversation, it transpired that the lady already owned a copy of the Big Pitch Guide that she had purchased in the days before the binder came as part of the parcel – and now she actually wanted the binder to complete the Guide.
Those of you who have seen the latest Itchyfeet Stand will probably have seen the minibus equipped with a huge television mounted in the rear – open up the rear door of the minibus, drop the TV down into position and it becomes a 50inch wide- screen advertising hoarding showing the DVD “It’s a whole new way of life.” The last comment we heard from a member of the public went along the lines of “As big as those b****y Yank motorhomes are – they still have to take a minibus with them to carry the b****y television – always have to do something bigger than the rest of us – always have done!”
I said at the beginning that this was to be a very physically tiring Show, and so it proved to be. Being on your feet, on the stand from about 9am in the morning through to around 6pm in the evening, followed by a quick break for a shower and shave, then gather to go out for dinner and finally to bed for about 11pm at night is fine for a couple of days but it requires a lot of stamina to continue that pace over a six-day period – but come to an end it eventually did and thankfully another ‘successful’ Show ended and we formed up in convoy heading back down the motorway to Cornwall to prepare for the Exeter Show the very next weekend.
