If they ever make a medal for attending IFSEC, Roy Cooper, Professional Security MD, ought to have one, because he was there at the first show, in 1972.
He recalls he was an apprentice with the alarm installers Chubb, and his company and others sent staff to the event founded by Victor Green. Its first home was a basement of the Royal Lancaster Hotel, in Hammersmith, west London. Roy didn’t go to the next few shows, but for some years was an exhibitor, in his days with Modern Alarms. “I once described IFSEC as like going to Disneyland, and there was the big castle in the middle. We had Cinderella’s castle, which was the big stand in the middle.” Around the millennium, that title could be claimed by the CCTV distributor Norbain; and now the show is back in London, at ExCeL in Docklands, it’s Tyco.
‘Golden ticket’
But to go back to Modern Alarms, Roy remembers how visitors had to have a ‘golden ticket’, Willie Wonka-like, if they wanted to enjoy the firm’s hospitality, ‘and they [tickets] were like gold dust, everybody wanted a golden ticket to get into the hospitality’. IFSEC in that sense is no different today; it’s as much about the nights as the days on the show floor; a hectic experience from the 10am opening until whatever hour you finish. “I always enjoy going to IFSEC,” Roy says, “meeting people, networking with people, and I think you get more out of that from a show; a lot of people launch products at show, they work hard and frantically to get product launches; I think it’s more about meeting and greeting and networking. Because there’s so much to do at IFSEC; you don’t have enough time to do it all properly.”
Move back
The format may be much the same; exhibitors under one roof, and hotels, bars and restaurants in the vicinity to carry on after 5pm. The venue has changed. Victor Green ran the show at Olympia until he sold it; Roy recalls that the new owners had to move it to Birmingham NEC, because Olympia had meanwhile given the time of year, March in those days, to the Daily Mail Ideal Homes show; so it moved to May. “In those days it was all installers [exhibiting], Chubb, Shorrocks, and there were hardly any manufacturers.” That changed with the move to the NEC because the switch from March to May crossed into two financial years; many of the exhibitors could not afford to do both. The show shrank to about 60 exhibitors; and built up by the millennium to be the giant that it has been ever since. And for 2013 came the move back to London; and the slimming down from four days, Monday to Thursday, to three, Tuesday to Thursday. “Where will it be in another 40 years’ time, I wonder?” Roy asks.
Moves with the times
While few of us may be around to know, even, we can say now that the show will move with the times, as it has so far. Names come and go; the I in IFSEC, which stands for International, is reflected in the exhibitors from Korea and China. Attention to stand management remains important, and Roy remembers from his Modern Alarms time going around branches training people in how to stand and how not to (don’t fold your arms, look welcoming and not angry to be there) and how to build the stand entrance (don’t make it look like a private area that might look off-putting for the visitor on the show floor). IFSEC would not be IFSEC without grumbles from attenders, on stands and visitors. At the NEC, it was way out of Birmingham; likewise ExCeL feels like a trek from other parts of London. But people still go; if IFSEC did not exist, someone would have to invent it.
For the preview of the IFSEC 2016 exhibition, see the June print issue of Professional Security magazine.
