May Challenge - Silly

Day 31 of DDW's May daily challenge - Silly

Way back on the 6th March 2012 I did my first daily challenge - with the theme of silly. Over a year later and I'm still doing them. I do find that having a starting point makes my life easier (or you would see a lot of pictures of the heron on the lake in Chiswick Park).

Today I heard the sad news that this years Focus on Imaging had been the last one. I have been to a few of these shows in recent years, they always seem well attended, but the costs for the exhibitors are very high, not just the cost of the stand, but all the literature that they have to give away and many other costs. I know that companies think very carefully about the costs involved, and frequently they are very hard to quantify.

Bean counters can tell you how much it costs to exhibit, but rarely do they consider the cost of lost business if your rival goes and you don't, until it is too late as your rival has grabbed your business.

Today's blip had a late change as a result of this news - some will see it as a silly decision (to make it fit the theme), but with the hobby of photography undergoing a true boom at the moment I would expect to see a new show coming along to fill the gap, it will probably need to be different to attract the right exhibitors (who cover most of the costs, tickets raise much less revenue), and with major retailers like Jessops and Jacobs no longer around to rent large stands to sell their wares it is likely to be smaller at least to start with. RIP Focus on Imaging.