The professional fair “Franchise Expo” has been organized for 30 years in Paris. The 2014 edition took place from March 23rd until March 26th and more than 500 companies were presenting their franchising concept.
Several sectors were represented : services, hotels and restaurants, minimarkets and supermarkets, specialist outlets, fashion, real estate, ….
As you can see the list is very long but some categories or sectors were overrepresented : restaurants and food shops accounted for 1/3 of exhibitors.
Au Bureau, The Kase, G-Star Raw get the IntoTheMinds awards for best booth design
While some of them made really great efforts to look attractive and present all the facets of their business including the design and customer experience provided by the point of sales, it was surprised to see that most brands had, so to say, only a table and two chairs but nothing “real” to rely upon. This was for me a little disappointment.
Fortunately some booths were really incredibly well designed and prepared. My personal award goes to Groupe Bertrand for their “Au Bureau” and “Irish Pub” brands and their booths looking like their stores. This gave a massive impression of professionalism and was so eye-catching that you couldn’t resist to stop by. Well done.
Another highlight (and a very interesting marketing discovery for me) was The Kase concept, launched by Jean-Emile Rosenblum (ex-CEO and founder of Pixamania). We’ll deal with it later in more details but for the moment, let just note that they had the more compelling (and perhaps the only real) customer experience concept on the fair.
I was also very well welcomed on the G-Star Raw booth were the design guys went a little wild (which I think is positive to attract some customer’s attention) and proposed denim clothes for dogs presented in a very … unusual way. Just have a look at the pictures below to get an idea of what I mean.
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Marketing.
