By: Staff Writer
September 6, 2022
A Caribbean designer participating in the Caribbean Export Development Agency organised mission to the Birmingham, UK “Autumn Fair” says that the event could have had more traffic and people in to see her jewellery.
The Autumn Fair mission, from September 4-7, in Birmingham, UK, was particularly underwhelming says Nadia Jabour, owner/operator of Designs by Nadia, St Lucia who was a part of a group of designers from around the Caribbean who were selected by CEDA to participate in this year’s event.
The Autumn Fair’s website says that it is the UK’s industry leading marketplace for wholesale home, gift and fashion. Our four-day event is held at the NEC Birmingham in September, offering the best products and inspiration just in time for the Golden Quarter.
Autumn Fair provides the perfect opportunity for buyers to top up their stock and make last minute orders for the festive season. With over 600+ UK and international exhibitors showcasing their collections each year, there’s a huge variety of products at Autumn Fair from across our four key buying destinations – Home, Gift, Moda and Design & Source.
Ms Jabour doesn’t seem to think the Fair was worth the effort put in: “There’s not a lot of people here. I was expecting more people, for one thing. More volume of traffic and more interest in what we brought overall.”
The weak traffic was chalked up to more consumers opting for online purchases than in store shopping, Ms Jabour reckoned.
The Fair may have also not been suited to the Caribbean designers that were invited to participate. She noted: “In terms of us coming to shows generally. I think that our placement at shows should be a little different. I think we need to go to more selected shows. More smaller shows that you have a more direct audience to selling. More small boutiques and more smaller businesses because we are unique and different.”
Ms Jabour said she took a collection of “fish scale jewellery” in her attempts to win over a few new customers, but there just was not enough people to draw from.
This 15 year veteran of the jewellery and fashion design industry hopes that there would be some residual business after the Fair is over and done with and someone who saw her will decide to look her up one day and buy some of her pieces. She has an online presence on Instragram and Facebook as well as her own website.
Ms Jabour also said: “I got into the jewellery business about 15 years ago. I lived in Toronto and after my kids were grown I decided to get back to my creative element. So I went and did a one day jewellery course on Queen Street in Toronto and because I have always been around the arts and I’ve always been designing- because I am a florist initially- and I do really out of the box kind of décor, I just took that element of what I do into jewellery making and that’s really truly how I got into it.”