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How was The Security Event 2026 – which ran for three days this week – for you? To ask an exhibitor during the show at the NEC was only to invite a reply like ‘great!’, no more useful to anyone than to ask a mate how they are, and to receive the answer ‘fine’.
Exhibitors had a spectrum of success in terms of visitors going on their stands: at the extremes, literally next to no-one, perhaps to first-timers from overseas there to test the market, to the big names whose big stands were jammed at peak times, around lunch. Exhibitors might not like all that popularity, although it has (intangible) value in giving off a message that the exhibitor is successful. An exhibitor prefers, Goldilocks-like, not too many visitors (making it hard to give them prompt and enough attention) and not too few (boring, a waste of money – exhibitors, when you add hotels and travel, can easily pay six-figure sums to be there – they, or the ones signing off that spend, want a return).
Viewpoints
Also, three people at work on the same stand may have different views of success. Someone may be there only to talk about the kit and explain features. Others in charge of accounts want to keep up with customers they know – TSE and other, smaller but more intimate events like Professional Security Magazine’s ST series around the British Isles, are of value for the personal touch, that you don’t get on a Teams call. If the exhibitor’s route to market is through end users, or installers, that’s the ones they want to welcome on the stand. Seeing known faces is welcome, to maintain a customer, because it’s so much more work to get a new one. Better still is to have a potential customer choosing to walk onto the stand, whatever you’re selling; used cars or video management software.
OEM aim
Less remarked on, because less noticeable, is the worth of an exhibition if you want to be an OEM – short for original equipment manufacturer. In plainer English, company A is selling boxes, but they’re actually made by Company B. Both may be exhibiting. Hence the value in a quiet time of the show – whether first or last thing – of a sales director from Company A walking the few yards to Company B, and having a conversation of perhaps only half a minute (a show floor is no place for long bonding sessions). What’s sought is not any decision or pen on paper, but progress towards that OEM agreement; a renewal of friendly contact (it’s been built up gradually) and agreement to have a Teams or Zoom call later. That half a minute may take up only one-twothousandth of the show time, but may make it all worthwhile for the director, whose sales skill has many parts: knowing the right moment, besides the right manner.
IFSEC compared
TSE has, in terms of time of year and venue, taken the place of the show that for decades bestrode the sector – IFSEC. If the shows look, even sound alike (that background noise of talk – how much is truly about business and how much about the night before in Birmingham city centre, or the 3am drink at the hotel?!) that’s because the ones who made TSE used to run IFSEC. In both cases, part of the reason to attend is what a new generation call FOMO (fear of missing out) and elders call Emperor’s New Clothes – no-one wants to risk being the one not to attend; which naturally exhibition organisers can play on. A manufacturer or distributor may periodically think they can call the bluff of the premier exhibition for the sector; they can piggy-back on it, hold an event in a nearby hotel, or attend only as a visitor, and get away with not spending on a stand. Their rivals would only gossip maliciously that such a company isn’t exhibiting because they can’t afford it and are in trouble. Untrue and unfair; but such is business.
Not VR yet
I did spot someone on a stand wearing a pair of virtual reality glasses, but despite covid lockdowns in 2020, and the slight sense that the NEC is showing its age (it opened in the late 1970s), show-going in general and TSE in particular look solid; there’s no sign that we’ll dial in remotely from our desks. See you at TSE 2027 from April 27 to 29.
Photo by Mark Rowe: TSE 2026 show floor.
