Since 1990, Birmingham\u2019s NEC has hosted the Clothes Show Live, an event at the heart of the city\u2019s popular culture calendar, which attracts over 125,000 fashion tourists every year. However, in an attempt to \u201crefresh\u201d the show and \u201crepresent a new era and visitor experience\u201d, next year the fashion event moves to Liverpool. What does this mean for Birmingham?<\/p>\n
The Clothes Show Live was founded in 1989 as a spin-out of a popular BBC fashion show. It is famous for showcasing the hottest fashion and beauty trends through its catwalks, 400+ exhibitors, educational seminars and demonstrations. It is branded as a \u201cleading fashion exhibition\u201d, which presents the opportunity for shoppers to become immersed within the glamourous fashion world and even be \u2018spotted\u2019 by modelling scouts. It is identified as a \u2018key contributory event\u2019 to Birmingham\u2019s tourism calendar and when it first moved to the NEC in 1990, was the only venue able to cope with the show\u2019s demand. Nevertheless, Liverpool\u2019s 2017 offer of a \u201cworld class\u201d exhibition and a \u201ccity full of people who live and breathe fashion\u201d has meant, that after 27 years, the show has finally \u2018runaway\u2019 from the second city.<\/p>\n
So does Birmingham need to be worried? Hosted by the NEC group (a Birmingham venue management company), the Clothes Show Live has been an important contributor to the West Midlands economy. However, it is only one of 73 public flagship events that the NEC group hosts every year and is responsible for only a small proportion of the \u00a32bn (per annum) and 29,000 full-time equivalent jobs that the group has created for the region. In 2015\/16 the NEC alone hosted a total of 522 events (there are additional events held at the ICC, Barclaycard Arena and Genting Arena) and attracts new shows every year. For example, the Insomnia Gaming Festival has just signed up for 10 shows over the next three years. These figures suggest that the NEC group will be able to recover the loss, but will the city?<\/p>\n
In lots of ways, the Clothes Show is much more than just one of the NEC\u2019s annual events. As part of the \u00a313 billion UK Fashion Tourism industry, the show attracts nationwide audiences and has the largest footfall of any event of its kind. The fact that it aligns with fashion tourism is valuable for promoting Birmingham, since fashion is such a socially pervasive sector and thus, information on the city\u2019s event is frequently disseminated internationally via social media platforms. Additionally, its popular date in December has meant it had become a \u2018pre-Christmas shopping ritual\u2019 for fashion tourists, who often visit Birmingham\u2019s retail stores as part of their experience. It also attracts a strong local audience, keeping a proportion of pre-Christmas shopping spend within the city. Furthermore, events such as the Clothes Show contribute to place marketing (image formation and destination branding), as well as a catalyst for other forms of development. It has shaped the image of Birmingham and become emblematic of its identity. Thus, the organiser\u2019s (Haymarket) decision to rebrand Clothes Show Live as the \u201cBritish Style Collective\u201d and relocate to Liverpool would have undoubtedly been a blow for Birmingham. The show\u2019s manager explained that they were \u201cmoving with the times\u201d and \u201cwanted to be able to give our audience something different and new\u201d. So as a key item moves off the city rail, how should and will Birmingham respond?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since 1990, Birmingham\u2019s NEC has hosted the Clothes Show Live, an event at the heart of the city\u2019s popular culture calendar, which attracts over 125,000 fashion tourists every year. However, in an attempt to \u201crefresh\u201d the show and \u201crepresent a new era and visitor experience\u201d, next year the fashion event moves to Liverpool. What does … Continue reading “The Clothes Show: Trying on a new City”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cities","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":277,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions\/277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}