UBM Asia has launched the Jewellery & Gem Fair – Europe, it’s first event on the European continent. The company already organises 15 jewellery fairs in Asia, including the giant September Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair.
Listed on the London Stock Exchange, UBM is the world’s second largest exhibition and event organiser operating in 30 countries and employing more than 6,000 people.
Jewellery & Gem Fair – Europe (JGF) will take place in Freiburg, Germany, in April 2014, and is timed to coincide with the much larger BaselWorld Show.
Wolfram Diener, senior vice president UBM Asia, said the JGF should not be seen as competing with BaselWorld but rather as a complementary event. Freiburg is a 30-minute train ride from Basel. The first JGF is scheduled for 1-4 April next year with a three-day cross-over of the last days of BaselWorld.
“We are not set to compete with BaselWorld, either for the watch sector or the very high-end jewellery sector,” Diener told Jeweller.
He explained that UBM began researching the need for a new fair in Europe two years ago and identified Frieburg as an ideal location for jewellery buyers to be able to attend two fairs simultaneously.
“Every year around 100 exhibitors drop-out of the BaselWorld event and we started talking to the industry in 2011. We then did a survey of 3,000 companies in the international jewellery industry and we identified a strong demand for a fresh jewellery trade show on the European continent,” Diener said.
Diener said he was most pleased with the feedback about the new fair saying UBM had quickly confirmed more than 200 exhibitors from 25 countries. “This figure represents 50 per cent of our expected number of exhibitors and represents 60 per cent of the total exhibition space, which indicates the market's enthusiasm for this new fair in Europe,” he said.
In fact, since the original marketing plan UBM has increased its expectation of support for JGF, most likely as a result of the fallout of exhibitors from the redevelopment of the BaselWorld precinct.
“When we completed our research our original target was 300 exhibitors for the inaugral event. But we have now raised that to between 350 and 400 because we booked nearly 200 companies 10 weeks after the announcement and now, 12 months out from the first event, there is close to 260 already confirmed,” Diener said.
“The gross floor area of the Freiburg exhibition halls for JGF Europe in Freiburg is 10,800 sqm out of which we can cover 7,000 sqm at the current status,” he explained.
Diener is expecting around half the exhibitors to be European companies and the other half mainly from Asia.
He said that UBM was already talking to the venue’s owner, the city of Frieburg, about expansion should there be a future need. "The launch of JGF Europe is an important milestone in UBM jewellery fair history. We are confident the fair will bring quality exhibitors, and equally important, serious buyers from around the world," Diener said.
The JGF website is promoting the fair as an add-on destination for BaselWorld visitors. “Being just 30 minutes away from Basel, buyers can easily visit two European fairs in one trip. Freiburg is part of a German-wide and international traffic network with excellent connections to airports, the long-distance ICE railway lines and interstate autobahns,” the website states.
Freiburg has a population of 230,000 and is in south-west Germany.