After the Giftware Associations hugely successful ‘Meet the Buyer’ event with the Tillington Group of garden centres, they have decided to create their own ‘Meet the Buyer festival’ in their home town of Birmingham.

The event, which has now reached maximum capacity for suppliers, is still on the lookout for buyers to attend and make the event even more successful and varied for the suppliers and for potential buyers to see some fantastic products from companies they may have overlooked at trade shows.

Simone Rose, Business Development Manager for ‘The Giftware Association’ said. “Our last event was brilliant, we were over whelmed by the response we got from people wanting to attend and we struggled as we only had limited spaces. But ‘The Tillington Group of Garden Centre’s were very helpful in hosting us at one of their annual meetings and everyone who attended the event received an order from the buyers present” She continues the success story “ We wanted to re-create this but on a larger scale and in our home town, again the response was fantastic and we have had to unfortunately let people down that we are oversubscribed, but it shows to us, that people are hungry for these types of events, so we will definitely be hosting more of them in the future and before the year is out”

The event will be held in Digbeth, which is the creative hub of Birmingham, the GA have been given an exhibition space in the iconic Custard Factory, birthplace to ‘Birds Custard’  and will be providing lunch from the nearby ‘Mockingbird Bar and Restaurant’. They have a variety of ‘exhibitors’ from all sectors of the gift market including toys and games to cards, stationery and craft items right through to food and drink and textile items.  A real mixture for the buyers in attendance, and an exciting opportunity for potential buyers to find that next best seller.

Confirmed buyers so far include John Lewis, Choice Marketing as well as select Independent Buyers from around the country such as Apple Pie House and Heritage Ltd, who run both bricks and mortar stores and also online sites, but the Giftware Association is on the lookout for more to make this day an even bigger and successful event than before from which they can build the foundations to an even bigger ‘Meet The Buyer’  initiative.

Sarah Ward, Chief Executive of the GA said ‘We really want to grow from our last event and the only way to do this was to host our own, the response was brilliant and we were fully booked in no time. We would like more buyers to make the event even more of a success and to bring buyers face to face with ‘exhibitors’ on the day, which even at Trade Shows is becoming harder and harder to do, we are acting as facilitators to the buyer supplier relationship which is another way we can help our members succeed”

If you are interested in attending this event as a buyer, please contact simone.rose@ga-uk.org or dave.kukadia@ga-uk.org. Alternatively, if you would like to attend one of our future events we can add you to our mailing list on enquiries@ga-uk.org