Oh, wow. Oh, boy. To Covid. Then let's hear what this business that we haven't. We maybe we haven't been super clear about what the business does. Booth design and manufacture or fabrication for events.
Acquiring Minds
From €4 Million, to Zero, to €12 Million
Excerpts · 367 segments · ~1:34:58 long
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Right, Correct.
Okay, great.
So we do everything from designing the booth, project management, producing the booth. We have a team of carpenters, electricians, men, metalsmith, and then we travel to the venue to assemble the booth. So mostly we travel to Western Europe, but also to the US or Middle East.
We assemble the booth and after the trade fair, we take it down and take it back to our premises, store parts of the booth that are going to be reused and wait for another exhibition. So this, this is how it works. And it's also why I mentioned that operations are so complex because we have so many different departments and teams within a company.
Right, right. And. And just going back on quality of revenue a little bit, it would seem that this business is very cyclical because it's tied to marketing. Events are a marketing expense for businesses. And marketing is. Is kind of notoriously one of the first expenses to be Cut in a belt tightening moment in a, in a, in a.
So in a soft economic environment. So was, was there a cyclicality related to kind of overall health of economy with this business?
Not at all. Oh, not at all. And for two reasons. Firstly, we are careful to select the clients in industries that are not cyclical. So we have strong presence in defense chemicals.
We are not doing flashy industries. We are not doing automotive, for example. Automotive would be very cyclical.
We don't want to be exposed to that. So first reason is selection of clients. And a second reason is that exhibition organizers designed it in such a way that if you don't attend one year, you lose your spot.
So these companies have worked for years to get the premier spot in the exhibition hall. And just one year they will miss and their spot is gone. And then when they decide to come again, they will be in some dark corner in a small exhibition hall and they will not have the spot with the most traffic.
Very interesting. Okay, and so you guys will actually decline new business from industries that you don't want to participate in?
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