Economic recovery and new blooms at New Start Scotland

It’s been 51 weeks since we (Web Wise Business) last exhibited at New Start Scotland at the SECC in Glasgow. Been quite the year.

When we went along last year it was with the sure knowledge that we were in, and getting deeper into, recesssion. No talk of green shoots back then – only Sir Tom (thanks for stopping at the booth) Farmer talking about one day it will end -see the previous BBC 2009 New Start coverage. So has it ended – did New Start Scotland  2010 feature any green shoots that were absent in 2009?

When we set up the booth this year we blew the dust off a wee video attractor sequence and played that on the stand. Last year when we filmed the sequence originally it featured a few shots of daffodils gently blowing in a westlin wind. Seemed a bit ominous when we noticed the daffs in the video – the long winter of 09/10 has held the daffies back by a good three weeks and there is no convincing signs of spring just yet (except for a couple of brave crocuses/crocii?). So what chance economic green shoots when even nature is running late?

As a barometer of economic activity trade shows are a bit of a weather vane. So how was New Start Scotland? Well it was undoubtedly smaller than last year if you were counting the number of exhibitors – perhaps not surprisingly. Marketing budgets will have been cut by many firms, while other firms will have sadly gone to the great trade show in the sky – but it was Neil Campbell of Red Cherry Marketing who, when he stopped by the stand, summed things up nicely – “it’s the visitor numbers that matter to those exhibiting”.

And visitor numbers seemed pretty healthy – particularly for the most of Friday. This year we ran a couple of workshops on sales and marketing as well as a couple of seminars on why “Sales are Easy and Marketing is Free” - they were mobbed, totally mobbed (if you came along thanks, much appreciated, let us know what you thought). In fact it was standing room only at almost all our sessions - at one point the organisers were turning people away from one of our workshops apparently. That despite the fact that we were billed against Shaf Rasul and Doug Richard at seperate times in the main seminar area (both of whom come with Dragon pedigrees). So for us the show was a success when measured by the most important metric – visitor engagement – in fact had the workshop areas been larger our contact level would have been even higher.

But does visitor engagement mean business for us and more importantly does it signal an end to the recession?

Well the answer is yes and not yet. We will get business from our activities at New Start Scotland – we felt that many enquiries were serious and genuine – so yip I’m sure we’ll get business. But as for the recession – I’m afraid it still has time to run.

That gloomy view is based on a number of things witnessed at the show. Here is my list of recession indicators…

1) A Banker came to our stand looking for business – yip a bank came to us (BTW we were interested in what he had to say).

2) Where was all the free stuff? (Very few giveaways or raffles that caught my eye).

3) Confidence of a few exhibitors seemed lacking – one or two didn’t bother showing for the “public” Saturday (not cool, so not cool)

4)  Nothing kicking ass! (well apart from us obviously) – no sign of a revolutionary business exhibiting or fantastic new product on show.

So my view of New Start 2010 would suggest the recession has got a bit further to run. Combine that with an election coming up, double dip possibility, public sector cut backs in 2011 and yip it’s hard to see a proper end just yet. But it’s not all gloom.

Doug Richard (late of the Dragons and now Start Up Schools) is a firm believer in getting a business started despite recession – the downside risk is much less than when an economy is booming. And as the economy warms a new start business will flourish. Makes sense to me and is borne out by our own experience at the show – young/new businesses “get it”  and are looking for help when it comes to winning sales online and driving their online marketing.  They can do things the larger and nervous companies can’t do – they can think quick, move fast and adjust easily to market conditions.

Thanks to New Start Scotland we saw the signs of new blooms when it comes to new business opps and they were all looking to the online world for help.  But as our long, cold winter finally comes to an end and daffs think about blooming it might be a while yet before any economic green shoots bloom in sufficient quantity to give us all a host of golden opportunities (apologies to Wordsworth).