Spring Fair 2017 Birmingham NEC

I was lucky enough to spend a few days with Jonathan, Vicky and Steve from Rainstick trading at this year's spring fair. The show is the largest gifts fair in the UK and happens twice a year, in February and September. I have traded in New York and Ouagadougou trade fairs and wanted to see what a UK trade show was like and I wanted see how Rainstick trading run their wholesale business, especially in these uncertain times.

Johnathan Wells founder of Rainstick trading is an old friend from the UK music festival scene and I love the fact that we cant work out exactly when we first met, but we have lived parallel lives going back to Camden market in the 1990s. 

For a number of festival traders who regularly traveled to Bali, Indian and parts of Africa, wholesale has become the natural progression as we have got older and had children.  There also comes a time when the British weather starts to make festivals a bit too much like hard work and festival organisers take traders for granted and put up rents regardless of numbers of people coming to the festival or what the economy is doing.

Over a decade ago I knew Johnathan as the Rainsticks and musical instruments guy. It's great to see how much the business has expanded. Rainsticks carries hundreds of lines from three continents, Africa, Asia and South America. 

The Spring Fair is the UK’s No.1 trade show for gift and home, welcoming more than 60,000 visitors through the doors of Birmingham NEC, over the course of 5 days.

The show has been connecting people with wholesale  products for 40 years, The Spring Fair attracts a purchase power of £2.4 billion, making it a must-do for over 2,500 exhibitors with must-have items and a must-see for buyers across independents, multiples, e-Commerce and more.

Walking around the exhibition I didn't notice any new entrants taking a single 2m by 2m stand. The smallest stand appears to be 6 meters long which means that companies are paying at least £6,000 and the really big stands like Yankie Candles must be paying between £30,000 and £40,000. 

On top of the cost of the stand, some companies spend additional money building a beautiful set costing another few thousand. 
Going round the halls it is easy to see that wholesale at this level is a very capital intensive business, the smallest stand costs over £2000 and most stand are round 3 basic stands put together.

On the positive side I recognized  businesses from twenty, thirty years ago, which makes me think that even with the various economic busts over the last twenty five years, many in the gifts industry have survived and thrived.

But I sensed a fear as I talked to exhibitors, or should I say apprehension about China made goods. From shopkeepers to wholesalers there is an unease about the continuing rise of China made goods. Someone even said, "thank goodness wages in China are going up" I saw quite a bit of proudly 'made in the UK' products. Especially in the cards area. I think it's a good thing. The world has lost far too many manufacturing jobs to the far East. Hopefully the growing market in British made goods will lead to manufacturing jobs, but I am not holding my breath. A few work shops around the country implying people in the tens will not lead to the numbers of people Britain once had in the car building, coal mining or ship building days of old.











Jonathan's business is firmly anchored in the global South indigenous handmade arts and crafts sector. It's a sector that does not fear China.
                                                             
Walking round I saw that African craft workers are loosing out to Indonesian, Bangladesh,Vietnam  and Balinese craft workshops. The Asian workshops have a very organised factory style set up and the owners have access to cheap capital that African craft makers cannot compete with. It means that there is not much in the way of innovation in semi mass produced African crafts. No one wants to take the risk.


I spoke to some companies selling African crafts from West and East Africa and many complained of low sales. I wasn't surprised as they had masks designs dating back to the 1980's. Soap stone figures that you can see in any charity shop on any high street in the UK. This is not to say that there is little innovation in Africa. What I saw was an opportunity to bring modern up to date African crafts which are being made all over the continent at the moment. UK importers in that sense are way behind. Exporters to America, France, Italy and Canada are doing very well at discovering many of the new innovative gems from Africa and they are turning a
good profit.

 In November Jonathan made a trip to Burkina Faso for SIAO, West Africa's largest and most important craft fair. It's there that Jonathan and I got talking. I was exhibiting and he was the buyer.

Jonathan has is a great eye for individual items that will fit into the collections of his different customers. Whether its a museum, furniture shop, gallery, school, hippy shop or an interior designer. He knows what will sell to who and which workshops and co ops can produce the most consistent work. Not long after Burkina Faso Jonathan was off to Vietnam, where he works with a couple of co ops.

All in all I met a lot of buyers and learned loads about wholesale in the UK and learned that a new entrant into wholesale can make good money through trade fairs, but you have to invest in doing at least 3 to 5 shows before you start getting those £25.000 orders.



As a maker, it was great to see the reception my new  product 'Crazy Specs' was getting at the fair from really different retailers. We think it's going to be a big story this summer. It's being wholesaled in the UK through Rainstick Trading. 

buy retail or wholesale rainsticktrading.com