On Friday 26th January 2024 I was woken by my alarm at a time that I didn’t even know existed!
I was on my way to London, specifically the Excel centre for the Bett Show 2024, the biggest education and technology exhibition in the world! My team had been at the show since the Tuesday so I was keen to get there and get involved.
Arriving at Chester Train Station you could tell it was early as I was the only person there!
The journey down to Euston was straight forward taking just over 2 hours, being a huge football fan I was excited as the train went past Wembley Stadium having several memories of visits to the iconic venue.
The train pulled into Euston, despite our Marketing Lead Helen having provided me with very clear instructions as to how to make my onward journey, I still took a few minutes to find my bearings and I was soon weaving my way through the underground to get to the Excel.
Having never been to this venue before I didn’t know what to expect but was pleasantly surprised with the facilities and the ease in which I found myself at our stand.
The MPS stand looked brilliant and really stood out in the hall against lots of other exhibitors, you could find us right by the entrance, so we had prime location to catch people as they arrived.
Over the 3 day event we had lots of people come over to speak to our sales team on the stand, expressing lots of interest in the selection of furniture items on display along with a ViewSonic screen which appeared to be drawing lots of attention.
My Colleague Owain had been running a stacking chair competition using mini chairs from our supplier Spaceforme all week and this was still proving very popular on Friday. The winner managed to stack a very impressive 18… I however only managed 4!
As the day went on I met lots of interesting people, many of whom had made the journey from outside of the UK. Hopefully we will get to work with some of the new contacts that were made at the show over the three days.
As the event closed on Friday after a very long 3 days for all involved, we packed away the stand and loaded up the van which turned out to be a very interesting game of tetras for all involved. After saying farewell I made my return trip across London again following the excellent instructions that Helen had given me to get my train back to Chester.
I got to the station, with what I thought was minutes to spare to catch the last direct train of the day to Chester, only for the train to be delayed by 20 minutes.
While on the train there was an announcement to say that as the train had been delayed and I would be entitled to compensation. All that all I needed to do was to visit Avanti West Coast website and to follow the instructions…how hard can that be I thought.
The refund process was in fact really easy, just a simple case of uploading my tickets and they did the rest.
I was given the choice to either have the refund sent back via a bank transfer or it could go to Action for Children, a charity that protects and supports young people. As a business we are happy to support any charity that works with children as many of our customers are in the education sector.
What a great way to end a great event!