While some 50 per cent of retailers reported a deterioration in sales at this year’s International Fair of Malta in a Chamber of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (GRTU) survey, the news is not particularly that discouraging, according to the GRTU director-general Vince Farrugia.
The concept behind the assessment is that the fair is returning to its founding values as an exhibition, and is no longer “the annual spending spree” that retailers have come to expect every year.
Instead, Mr Farrugia explained, the fair is serving its purpose by gathering together different sectors under one roof, where consumers are able to “window shop” in comfort without having to traverse the Islands from one retail outlet to another to determine the right product for them.
The fair, he added, had begun as an exhibition but has become an event at which retailers now expect to sell in large volumes. But, as Mr Farrugia pointed out, the fair itself is not where the real spending takes place, but rather a place where people view the different products available and later visit the respective retail outlets to make their purchases.
As such, Mr Farrugia argued, the fair should be brought back to its roots as an event at which retailers exhibit their latest and most interesting products and take the opportunity to come up with original, innovative and imaginative displays and products to attract the public’s attention.
This is in line with the belief that people are visiting the fair as a
special event, as a day out and for the overall experience, rather than to carry out their big annual purchases.
In the recent past, the retailing community has invested heavily in upgrading its outlets, many far above the standard of stalls set up at the fair which, Mr Farrugia added, needed to be more creative and not just extensions of retail outlets. As such, he said, the degree of success for retailers at the fair depended on how they used the event.
While retail outlets across the Islands have been upgraded in terms of quality, one-off events at individual outlets hardly draw the numbers attracted by the Trade Fair.
From next year, the fair is to be held under the tent at Ta’ Qali. Mr Farrugia appealed to the Trade Fairs Corporation to ensure its future success by responding to these new trends and changing consumer patterns by making the fair more of an annual event, with enhanced entertainment value.
150 different retailers were questioned in the survey. Fifty per cent found that business had deteriorated, just over 34 per cent said they had seen the usual level of business being achieved, while almost 16 per cent said they had done better than usual.
Television, furniture and home decoration retailers fared the worst, with respective numbers recording less business at 75 per cent, 60 per cent and 65 per cent. Sixty-five per cent of air conditioning retailers said they had fared the same as in the previous year.
Forty-nine per cent of retailers reporting lower business cited the fact that people were visiting the fair as an outing rather than for shopping, while 28 per cent said sales had fallen as people had less money to spend.