Executive Hire News › Archives › March 2009 › Forum: Bringing our industry together

Forum: Bringing our industry together

On behalf of the Executive Hire team, I would like to thank the 133 innovative suppliers – including 52 new – that exhibited at the Executive Hire Show last month and contributed to such a positive event. We are delighted at the number of exhibitors that accepted our challenge to introduce new products at this year’s Show. In so doing, you are clearly reinforcing your commitment to continue to offer innovative solutions to the hire industry.

As you will read in our hirers’ review of the Show, we are not the only ones to appreciate suppliers’ efforts at the Show. Many hirers recognised that “this year’s Show was better than last year because more suppliers had introduced a large number of innovative products that created more interest.”

The most eloquent comment from our review reads, “the last three years at the Ricoh Arena have simply got better and better as the Show has developed. The quality of exhibitors and the amount of effort and finance that they put into their stands has clearly increased year-on-year and it demonstrates that our industry is progressive and innovative in terms of product development. This crystallises my view that our industry is a supplier of problem-solving equipment and a source of knowledge to a wide range of trades.”

Whilst, inevitably I suppose, attendance was down on last year, there was a steady flow of national and independent hirers eager to mix with such a wide variety of exhibitors. We are immensely proud to have brought our industry together at a time when it needed a boost. It is great that so many hirers hold the Show in such high opinion as when leading figures in our industry greet you in the aisles by saying, “this is the best show for the hire business. If you make the effort to attend and talk to exhibitors, you will always find something new.”

Whilst the Show’s influence will continue for months as enquiries are followed up, demonstrations arranged, deals done and new business relationships start to develop, it’s back to the day job now. There are, undoubtedly, a number of tough challenges to be faced before we all meet again. Like everyone else, our revenue is way down – as is obvious from the smaller issue sizes that we are now producing. This has forced me to call time on the services of two of the Executive Hire team, Allie Astell and Steve McKenzie, who have each contributed significantly to our success over the last two to three years, particularly with the Show. I would like to thank them publicly for all their contributions and let you know that they will still be around. Both are setting out on new enterprises serving our industry – so expect to see and hear from them in the coming months. As I’m sure many of you are finding, it is heart-breaking to start to dismantle much of what we have taken great care to put together in recent years.

We are certainly in tough times. Hire, however, plays an important part in the UK’s economic fabric - particularly in its relationship with construction. It is impossible to imagine the construction industry functioning without the hire of tools, plant and equipment. Now more than ever, we must take every opportunity to convert more end users to the merits of ‘hire’. Still mired in the ‘credit crunch’, all the indications are that, despite Government calls, credit lines to small and medium sized companies continue to be cut. In addition, many hirers at the Show had their tales of bad debts, often from companies they had considered financially sound.

Given the large stakes the Government now has in major banks, we would have expected to see some improvement by now, but it appears that they can’t even stop Sir Fred’s outrageous RBS pension, although this will soon be old news. Concentrating on the big picture, with a budget due next month, this Government must act to provide a stimulus package for construction.

Such a stimulus will benefit hirers and, in turn, lead to increased sales for the large number of innovative suppliers that have already demonstrated their commitment for our cause – all, hopefully, coming together before the 2010 Show. Meanwhile, as the Show so admirably demonstrated, a pro-active and positive outlook is something that all of us must strive for.

Robert Aplin