51 COMPANY PROFILE creative industries organising a number of different events from our older legacy shows like CHSI – Stitches, Sewing for Pleasure and the Creative Craft Show to Cake International, Makers Central, Scottish Quilting Show and Crafting Live. Who are your shows aimed at? We organise a mixture of trade and consumer events with several of our events like Cake International and Makers Central running as hybrid events spanning both retail and trade. What makes your shows different to other consumer shows? We pride ourselves with our dynamic approach on events and the most important part to any show is to keep it fresh and relevant and never forget who your audience is. Education has always played an important part of our shows with workshops, talks and industry specialists all on-hand to take questions and help our visitors with projects and questions. We employ industry specialists who are well placed to continually develop the shows and see trends both current and future. Hobby & crafts have boomed over the last two years! Have you noticed any new trends? It has been wonderful to see the boom from both new and traditional crafts over the last two years with us seeing massive up-trends in knitting, home-sewing and embroidery through to mixed-media, cake decorating and art. We’re also seeing bucket lists of crafts that people just want to try such as glass and mosaics, pottery, silver clay, macrame and working with wood. What are you looking forward to most over the next year? Over the next year, I’m really looking forward to continuing on the development of all of our shows which have been on a journey of re-discovery since coming out of the pandemic. One of the main reasons we enjoy running shows so much as a company is seeing the joy on our visitors faces when they arrive at our shows and then watching their journey through the event to the time they have to leave us. For many, it’s not just a shopping experience – they meetup with friends and family some of whom it’s an annual ritual. Their own mecca where it’s their time to enjoy themselves no matter what’s going on in their lives. Do you have a favourite show? Each show is very different but the feeling for me is the same. I suppose the most interesting show for me is Makers Central which is full of inventors, influencers and makers with tools for woodworking, robotics, costume making, metalwork and a 50/50 ratio of both men and women all absolutely passionate about their craft. How can visitors get tickets to visit an ICHF show? People can go online to view our calendar and buy tickets for any of our shows www.ichfevents.co.uk . Whichever show you attend, you’re guaranteed a warm welcome, thousands of products to buy and the very best talent in the world to learn from.
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