I have spent most of the weekend lying down in a darkened room, recuperating from not one but two shows, back-to-back. If you want to catch up with what happened at the New York Toy Fair – and there was plenty to report, particularly with regard to future events – you can read the Blog I posted on Toy World on Friday.

After taking the red eye back from New York last Monday, I headed straight down to East London for this year’s BLE. It was the first time the two shows have run straight into each other – and thankfully, it will be the last. The organisers of the New York Toy Fair have decided that Q1 is the optimum time for the show after all, so this year’s experiment – which saw the show move forward to the end of September – won’t be repeated.

Indeed, the change of date for the New York event led to Informa deciding to move BLE back to start on the Wednesday rather than the Tuesday of last week, to make life just that little bit easier for those people who wanted to visit both events. It’s never ideal to finish a trade show on a Friday, but in practice it turned out fine – because BLE was a triumph.

Now, those of you who read my Toy World Blog know that I don’t throw compliments around unless I truly mean them. I am not a client journalist, seeking to ingratiate myself with show organisers by ‘happy clapping’ their events, regardless of whether or not they were a success – there are enough ‘everything is great’ Prozac journalists out there doing that already.

So, credit where credit is due: despite the huge challenges that Anna Knight and her formidable team faced yet again this year, they overcame them all with aplomb. Maybe next year Anna will finally get her ‘quiet’ year with no curveballs? There was some good news on the eve of the event, when the proposed London Underground strike was cancelled at the last minute. That was always a possibility, although extensive contingency plans had to be put in place to support visitors just in case the strike had gone ahead after all. To arrange those fallback options at short notice, on top of the huge workload that organising a show entails, is no mean feat.

Despite the good news from London Underground, the National Rail strike wasn’t cancelled, which did have a modest impact on the first day’s attendance. However, it didn’t deter people from visiting the show – it just meant that Thursday was absolutely rammed. Even Friday, which some had feared would tail off considerably, held up reasonably well.

The overall numbers were strong; the show attracted just shy of 10,000 attendees. If you strip out exhibitors, the ‘pure’ visitor total represented a 28% increase on last year’s figure – in fact, last year’s attendance was beaten by lunchtime on Thursday. There was a strong retail presence too, with 1166 retailers from 57 countries visiting the show. Many were there on the last day too: after my last meeting on Friday, Tesco were due to follow me onto the stand. When retailers are still there after lunchtime on the final day of a show, it’s always a positive sign.

Although the show remains predominantly European-focused, many of the larger licensing companies brought over senior personnel from the US, which is a mark of its importance on a global scale.

However, encouraging as they were, trade shows are never all about the numbers – the quality of meetings and how confident people are feeling play a huge part in the way an event is evaluated. The good news is that the mood at BLE was far more upbeat than it has been for the past few years. This was probably only evident in hindsight, when you look back and realise that there has been a degree of caution hanging around much of the licensing community post-pandemic. The truth is that Team Licensing.Biz had far more productive meetings this year, with licensors keen to engage with us and look forward to next year with renewed vigour and optimism. A lot of the meetings we had with licensing companies back in 2021 were tentative, with many unwilling to commit upfront to activity for the following year. Last year was better, although there were still some licensors holding back – but this year was a different story entirely, with the majority of licensors keen to look at what we can do together over the coming months. We have a lot to follow up on, which is the hallmark of a good show.

There were a few big names absent from this year’s exhibitor list, but that shouldn’t be too much of a concern: I have no doubt that some will be back next year, and anyway, it gave licensees and retailers more time to see other exhibitors (especially those visitors who were only able to be there for a day).

I was also impressed with the stand that was occupied by a selection of licensing agents: they don’t compete directly, and it gave them a show floor presence, rather than them having to permanently take up residence in one of the coffee shops or lounges all week. Having just returned from New York Toy Fair, where non-retail attendees are charged anything between $350-1500 to gain entry to the show, I think offering licensing agents a shared stand opportunity is a very good compromise.

Next year’s show shuffles forward in the calendar slightly – it will take place from 24th-26th September. The traditional Tuesday-Thursday configuration also returns. For anyone wondering, I am hearing that the growing LA Toy event may also move forward next year (early reports suggest the main ‘international week’ will be around 4th-13th September), so at least there will be clear water between LA and BLE.

Over the coming months, we’ll be bringing you everything you need to know about the properties that will be helping to shape the retail landscape in 2024 across both Toy World and Licensing.biz. In the meantime, it’s time to dive into the follow up proposals from the show – deep breath….