In the run up to FESPA Digital 2012, Large Format Review asked FESPA’s managing director Neil Felton to explain more about the FESPA’s activities beyond the exhibition and here’s what he said...

“The FESPA brand is synonymous with major exhibitions in Europe, Asia and the Americas which draw wide-format printers to major cities around the world to review latest developments in printers, software, inks and substrates.

FESPA events have built a reputation for offering visitors excellent value beyond the show floor, from conferences and interactive features to live competitions, debates and workshops. Our success in attracting growing visitor audiences is the envy of the trade exhibition world.

Away from the shows, the FESPA brand is familiar through our social media platforms, including our own Wide Network, while in the UK the national association for screen and digital wide format printers recently adopted the name ‘FESPA UK Association’, abandoning its former brand – Prism – to reemphasise its connection with FESPA, and highlight the value this link delivers for UK printers.

That move highlights what is possibly FESPA’s best kept secret. The exceptional growth and diversification of FESPA’s event portfolio since 2005 has arguably blinkered the print community as to FESPA’s real mission – to invest in a bright business future for wide format print.

To understand that, it helps to rewind fifty years (FESPA celebrates its golden jubilee in 2012) to the foundation of FESPA by a small group of highly committed national screen printing associations. They came together as FESPA to network and share knowledge as the sector gathered momentum, moving away from its craft base and becoming a more industrialised process. Technology has always been a driver, and in the last ten years, FESPA has adapted its proposition to reflect the digital revolution, and help printers to take advantage of the inherent opportunities.

From those modest roots, FESPA has blossomed into a truly global organisation, with a member base spanning 37 countries , and serving more than 200,000 individual stakeholders, from members to exhibition visitors and suppliers. Our strapline, ‘United We Print’ embodies that global ‘family’.

FESPA was founded as a not-for-profit organisation, but with the growth and commercial success of the FESPA events, the organisation now generates substantial revenues. Once the operational costs are taken care of, surplus revenues are destined for reinvestment for the benefit of the global wide format print community through FESPA’s Profit for Purpose programme. FESPA’s shareholders ARE the wide format industry, a fact which makes FESPA very different from any other exhibition organiser in the print space.

Some of the reinvestment is managed directly by FESPA, which commissions significant market research and publishes this in the form of regular Surveys and Reports, summaries of which are available to the entire community, with the full research findings made available free of charge to members of its national associations.

FESPA.com offers a superb online resource library for printers, and specialist publications such as the FESPA Planet Friendly Guide and the FESPA Sensations special effects showcase are available to help printers address business critical challenges like improving environmental performance, or promoting their capabilities to print buyers.

Beyond the guide, ‘Planet Friendly’ is a brand that embraces a range of resources for printers, from publications and advice lines to the live Planet Friendly ‘clinics’ which will be run by FESPA’s environmental experts on the FESPA stand (B15a) at FESPA Digital 2012 in Barcelona.

Developing and delivering content that can change printers’ business for the better is a mantra for FESPA. This is evident in the rich conference programmes that are delivered free of charge at FESPA exhibitions (the Explore Conference at FESPA Digital 2012, for example) and in the global programme of FESPA Summits and Congresses staged by FESPA with the involvement of its national associations.

At grass roots level, FESPA’s community can access more local educational and networking opportunities via the national associations, who have easy access to FESPA co-funding to deliver initiatives such as training days, round tables, technical seminars, and competitions to highlight creativity, print skill and best practice.

In the last seven years, FESPA has reinvested a staggering three million Euros back into the global community. More detail on this will be available in FESPA’s new Reinvestment Report, which will be launched on site at FESPA Digital 2012 in Barcelona.