The three jewellery buying groups will support Expertise Events' Jewellery Fairs in 2013
Jewellery fair rumours put to rest
Posted May 07, 2012 | By Dean Millard • Staff Journalist
After a number of announcements about changes to next year’s trade
fairs, Expertise Events has moved to quash speculation some major
players were planning to not attend.
Expertise Events CEO Gary Fitz-Roy has confirmed all three jewellery buying groups will be supporting the three Australian Jewellery Fairs run by his company in 2013.
Fitz-Roy was keen to snuff out the growing rumour that not all of the buying groups were planning on being involved in next year’s fairs, saying the prospect of them not being there had not been discussed with him because he hadn’t met with each of the groups regarding 2013 until recently.
“I don’t know that they were ever ‘off board’ but I guess there was a rumour, or one or two exhibitors who had too much idle time at Brisbane, who were saying the buying groups were pulling out or a couple of them were pulling out,” Fitz-Roy said.
“We hadn’t even spoken to them at the time so I found it quite extraordinary that these comments were coming out when we hadn’t even had a conversation about next year,” he added.
Fitz-Roy said the involvement of the buying groups was important as the fairs acted as major networking occasions for the industry and as such it was important to have the key players involved.
He said he didn’t know how the rumour started or why people thought that the buying groups would not be involved in 2013 but guessed someone had taken something out of context and Chinese whispers did the rest.
“Sometimes people will only hear a part of a conversation, or the part that they want to hear, which can mean it is taken out of context and it goes from there.”
Fitz-Roy said the plan to continue to hold the Brisbane fair in March after initially signaling a change to later in the year was being well received so far by the industry with a number of people now confirming their participation who previously were still reviewing.
“We have had some good feedback on that and people are happy about that,” Fitz-Roy said, adding, “At the end of the day our objective has been to deal with the fairs so that they become more cost effective and I think people recognise now that is what we are trying to do.”
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