INTERMOT in February - the right plan but 15 years too late
The INTERMOT saga continues. Once one of the two largest motorcycle industry exhibitions in Europe, Covid forced a 2020 cancellation, but the problems for INTERMOT started earlier than that.
There had been dissatisfaction among some parts of the 'Cologne' exhibitor community as early as the 2016 show. In 2017 was already concern that the show was not delivering a proportionate return on exhibitor investments, that attendance was lower that it needed to be.
Following the 2018 expo, that dissatisfaction morphed into a tsunami of negativity and the future of the show was already in trouble before Covid dealt it a long-term blow in 2020 - a blow that still has the potential to be terminal.
Many people, me included, had been suggesting to Koelnmesse (the Cologne Exhibition Center that organises and stages it for IVM - the German motorcycle industry trade association) that the show needed to be held annually and move to February (away from EICMA) as early as 2006 (the year the show moved to Cologne from Munich).
This was in response to ANCMA's decision (the Italian motorcycle industry trade association) to break its agreement with the IVM, ending the alternate annual show rotation that had seen the shows working well in tandem.
ANCMA had its reasons - mostly to do with OEM membership fees and of increased costs of moving EICMA away from the historic, but outdated downtown Mussolini era Deco/Brutalist edifice.
Among the effects of SM and the internet on the motorcycle show sector, one of the most toxic had been to apparently cut the umbilical cord that tied the OEMs to autumn shows. That allowed them to jettison a new model year introduction cycle that had been a fundamental structural pillar.
'walk away from the shows'
With that gone, the OEMs were able to escape the effects of a structured new model introduction cycle on their calendar, for an unstructured new model introduction cycle that could be shaped by them instead, to suit different business cycles. Cycles that allowed the OEMs to choose when, why and (above all) how to release new model information, and to do so in line with their perception of what worked best for their production and sales cycles.
They were also eying big savings at a time when it was widely expected that shows were 'over' and would never be the 'power in the land' again.
In 2020 and 2021 the primary response among the OEMs, especially in Germany, was to walk away - from INTERMOT especially. BMW even went as far as to state on, the record that, moving forward, it would stop using corporate budgets to fund expo investments.
For a period of 24-36 months, the motorcycle industry (in Europe especially) was convinced that they didn't they had been liberated, that they didn't need the shows anymore, that the public no longer wanted to attend them and that they no longer served any practical competitive advantage.
They were wrong. All they were now focussed on were the (theoretical) savings, as exhibition budgets could shrink, and the increased overlordship and empowerment that being able to directly 'boss' they customers through their device screens would give them. They really were (and largely still are) that naïve and that insanely drenched in corporate 'Kool Aid'.
Ironically, the reaction of the OEMs, in Germany in particular, in INTERMOT's hinterland, included those who are, in effect, the German Motorcycle industry trade association's owners and stake holders, in both conceptual and financial terms. Not least BMW - whose arrogant pronouncements on shows was tantamount to "screwing their own pooch". Oh, the hubris of it.
Fast forward five years or so and the OEMs in Germany (in particular - manufacturers, subsidiaries and importing subsidiaries) must be in a blind panic. The experiment of moving INTERMOT to a December timing was a forced acknowledgement that they failed to compete and had allowed their show to now stand behind EICMA in the line for new model debuts. What were they thinking? It was never going to work.
So now we have a brand new bright and shiny idea - "I know, let's stage INTERMOT every year, but in February".
What a great idea. You finally got to the same blindingly obvious conclusion that dozens if not hundreds of people in the motorcycle industry had been trying to tell you more than a decade ago.
So, now that they have done it, all will be well, yes? No, it won't. The decision was left so long that the opportunity for INTERMOT to prosper annually in February has closed on them. I hope I am wrong, and I for one will certainly visit it on February 19-21, 2027, but the Q1 expo landscape in Germany (and Europe as a whole) is now entirely different. It has altered decisively.
Without taking account of MOTORbuers in Utrecht, or Motor Bike Expo (MBE) in Verona in January and MC-Massan in Sweden at the end of January, or any of the dozen or so valuable specialty and regional shows that happen around Europe in the February through April period, INTERMOT is now faced with even fiercer competition than EICMA represented.
In the space of three or four weeks, the industry will now be expected to support, sustain, invest in and help further develop cluster of budget-cucking events - INTERMOT at Cologne, Mondial du Deux Roues at Lyon, IMOT at Munich and MOTORRÄDER Dortmund at the beginning of March. All three of those other shows have been doing increasingly well in recent years, as have Utrecht, Verona and the newly re-born show in Sweden.
Like nature, capitalism abhors a vacuum and the uncertain response to ANCMA's declaration of war on INTERMOT in 2006 has now left the show at a major competitive disadvantage. Others have since stolen the February opportunity from them. At a time when the weakness in new model registrations will likely feed back into marketing budgets, the outcomes will profit no one.
