Design Shanghai
What an amazing city, such energy and life. We came not expecting too much but both Carol and i were blown away by Shanghai, we would happily come back and do business here again.
We came on on the usual rip off taxi sharing with the wonderful Alun Heslop the furniture maker. Its amazing how often I fall for it. I am lost in a new city, I am jet lagged and vulnerable and this nice man is offering to find me a taxi, of course I take it.. Idiot.
We are all staying a week at Shanghai Hilton as a part of “the package” There is booming flyover motorway past the door and just over the road the most AMAZING buddhist temple you could clap eyes on. in front of the temple is a garden with fish ponds and happy old ladies doing Tai Chi. Carol wants to come and live here.
We have a day or so to set up, four days of the show with “Tear Down” the evening of the last day. We then have a couple of days to do any follow up work we choose to do.
The exhibition is in a Soviet Russian built exhibition centre about ten minutes walk down the road .
We go down there the first afternoon to get our passes and see what is going on. We had a last minute stand change from one to another. I am always suspicious when this happens. It suggests to the seasoned hand that they couldn’t sell all the space and are now having to regroup and relocate exhibitors. They put it to you very positively and there is not a lot you can do but go along with it but tinkles of alarm were ringing.
Jaguar are here, the jewel people Swarovski are here with great crystal construction outside the hall. Tons of people are here to sell european design . The halls have the energy of a termite mound, everyone going in all directions at once.
There are three main halls Contemporary, Classic and Collectables. We chose to be in Collectables as we were advised that this would be where the money would be directed first. With its own entrance and with an invited audience of mega wealthy Chinese we would not see the huge crowds that beset last years exhibition. We in “Collectables” would get the cream poured over us every day.
The best of it was to be an auction of work just from the Collectable Hall. The Chinese love an auction and we would be able to promote on our stand each day the items that we chose to sell either on the stand or at auction on the Sunday. This was going to be fun.
