ES. With over 30 years of experience across sectors including automotive, energy, media, and events, which key milestones have most influenced your leadership approach and strategic thinking?
Jason Stead. I was fortunate to join Nissan’s Graduate training scheme after university. As part of that program, I had a Japanese mentor who helped shape my thinking. I worked in Supply Chain and Procurement, and cost reduction wasn’t the overriding measure of success. Quality, knowledge, value engineering, design, delivery, customer service, management quality were all valuable attributes of a supplier. Looking at all these factors of course allowed us to push cost out of the business, but it was done in a very considered manner. The thoughtfulness of the Japanese approach and the long-term nature of supplier relationships allowed everyone to invest with confidence and create supply chain advantages.
Other things I believe we should all more spend time on are people management and motivation, explaining how P&Ls work to everyone in the business, and time spent on the show floor. Very few businesses consist of zero people and zero financial pressures.
Lastly be open to new ideas, don’t be too precious about your ideas over those of others – stay flexible.
ES. Since joining GES in 2014 and now leading the EMEA region, how have you driven business growth through new revenue streams, client retention, and service innovation?
Jason Stead. 12 years has never passed so quickly. I don’t like being bored and our industry is the antidote to boredom. We have consistently grown the EMEA Exhibitions business at GES. We have a small, talented leadership team that communicates a lot with one another. We all have different outlooks which helps with balance. The people within GES make us who we are today and who we’ll be in the future. They are the ones who’ll grow with the business, who’ll improve it and redesign it over time. They are our biggest asset and have helped us deliver the growth plan.
Our growth has come through improving our product, geo and customer mixes, through driving efficiencies, through innovating and invention, and through being a more sales led (as opposed to fulfilment) business. Clients want to see innovation, and we all must try harder in this space. Clients want to improve their yields from the show floor and sometimes this means committing more to fewer suppliers, streamlining delivery, which can in turn lead to significant build time savings and quality improvements. This approach also drives out usable data, something that fragmented show floors struggle to generate.
Simplification, in my experience is the hardest thing to deliver in any business, but without it, it makes growth riskier and ever more complex.
Lastly, we must always remember that the visitor and exhibitor are the lifeblood of the industry. Everything we do has to be about them. Let’s make life easier for them, simplify their choices, improve their time commitments,
give them usable data, help them buy and sell more. In everyday life we pay for convenience. Things like airline priority boarding, takeaway food delivery services, online taxi booking, grocery deliveries, etc. These businesses are monetizing time. We can do the same.
ES. GES EMEA operates across multiple countries including the UK, Netherlands, UAE, and Saudi Arabia- what operational or market factors most impact how exhibitions are delivered across these regions?
Jason Stead. We also opened a facility in Paris in March, and we’ve been trading in India for over a year now! Every region is different. The principal differences are structural. We’ve learned a lot about establishing entities in different geographies. We are still learning as each new geography comes with its own set of rules and demands. Macro factors that impact show delivery such as taxation, labour laws, religion, real estate costs, venue locations/layouts, transport infrastructure are unavoidable.
There are also micro factors on which we have more influence, for example, some regions place more emphasis on personal relationships, others on technology, others place more emphasis on visual appearance, so demand more graphics or lighting. Understanding these nuances helps deliver better customer experiences, improving retention and growth. Recent factors impacting show delivery include the Middle East conflict, EU rules for non-EU workers, Venue practices (open or in-house), and potential recession.
ES. With increasing geopolitical challenges and supply chain disruptions, what measurable impact are you seeing on event logistics, costs, and exhibitor participation across EMEA?
Jason Stead. Uncertainty and confidence are our biggest challenges. These are hard to measure directly but often translate across the economy including events and exhibitions. As I write this, our Middle East business is on pause. I’ve no doubt that when the hostilities end the region will bounce back stronger than ever. With that bounce back other regions will also benefit, notably with travel, petro based material supplies and fuel costs. We are blessed as an industry that we live in the face-to-face space. It’s part of the human condition to want to come together. When we do meet, we buy, sell, show off, network, celebrate, have fun, learn, travel together, and we benefit from this as an industry.
We are also fortunate that Middle East governments are such strong supporters of the MICE Industry, seeing it as a true growth engine for business and strong GDP multiplier. This continued commitment and support is essential and valued. We should end this article thinking about what makes our industry such a fabulous place in which to work, to invest, to enjoy. We are brilliant problem solvers and opportunity spotters. If its important to someone, there’s an event for it. I love that.
