The health business is booming
It’s just buzzing along, reflecting the growing health awareness and once again hitting new records this year: with a solid plus of 9.2% in visitor numbers, a 3.7% increase in exhibitors and an exhibition area that was sold out to the last square metre, this year’s FIBO impressively emphasised its role as the leading international trade show and pacemaker for the international fitness and health industry.
With a total of 58,100 visitors (previous year: 53,200) and 581 exhibitors (560) on a total area of 75,000 m², the largest FIBO of all times topped all previous records of the classic trade show triathlon, even exceeding the ambitious expectations that had been voiced in the run up.
Brilliant results that put bright smiles on the faces of FIBO Director Olaf Tomscheit and his team: “The course and the speed of FIBO’s development since 2005 are sensational.” Since 2005, when a mere 339 companies took part as exhibitors, the trade show with a more pronounced focus on the health market has grown to new dimensions. The result: a 70% increase in exhibitors since 2005 and visitor numbers up almost 50%. “The entire industry, and FIBO with it, took a gigantic step towards the health market in the past five years”, says Olaf Tomscheit.
A trend which was even more pronounced at this year’s FIBO and determined the course of business. This is also evident from the results of the representative market research regularly performed at FIBO. They show that one in four fitness studios currently plan to invest in health promotion and expand their line of business into this field. And that is not a one-way development either, since physicians and therapists have likewise come to resort to health-oriented exercise schemes in patient treatment with increasing frequency. “A convergence of the fitness and the health markets which FIBO took into account in its strategic orientation at a very early stage“, says Hans-Joachim Erbel, Managing Director of FIBO organiser Reed Exhibitions GmbH.
This brought a new quality of trade visitors: meanwhile more than 20% of all trade visitors are members of the health professions and working in a physiotherapy practice, a rehabilitation clinic or as physicians in private practice.
“A new quality of trade visitors who would never have dreamt of visiting FIBO five or ten years ago”, says Hans-Joachim Erbel.
The health market is booming. This is evident from the business barometer in the study conducted by the Swiss trade show market research institute Wissler & Partner during the trade show. According to the study, 60.3% expect a strong or at least a slight increase in the demand for fitness and health services. Accordingly, there is a pronounced willingness to invest in new installations and training equipment. One in six companies (16.6%) already placed orders with a value exceeding 200,000 euro at FIBO, and 6.5% of the order even had a value exceeding one million euros.
Exhibitors who specifically target fitness fans also did well. On average, one in three private visitors spent more than 100 euros, one in eight went to even greater expense and made purchases totalling more than 250 euros.
The next FIBO will take place from 19 to 22 April 2012 in Essen.
Exhibitors’ comments:
“We feel that for us FIBO 2011 was the best FIBO ever. We never had such huge numbers of visitors at our stand before. Our production targets both fitness studios and physiotherapist and health facilities. In both areas we did good business at FIBO.”
Michael Resch, Managing Director, ERGO-FIT GmbH & Co. KG
“Especially for our segment, FIBO has taken a fantastic development. When we came here for the first time in 1992, we were still quite a rarity as suppliers of products for sports and health – meanwhile we have plenty of company. The development of FIBOmed, which we have been observing for six years now, is excellent. Besides, the trade show offers a high quality of visitors, especially from abroad, and attracts considerable media attention.”
Felix Artzt, Managing Director, Artzt GmbH
“We are absolutely satisfied with the course of FIBO. We had a large number of interested trade visitors at our stand, not only on the classic trade visitor days but also on Saturday. This gave us another opportunity to approach both fitness studios and physiotherapist facilities. We look forward to coming back in 2012.”
Jürgen Decker, Managing Director, miha bodytec GmbH
“We are more than satisfied with this year’s FIBO. The boom of the fitness market continues, and fitness is becoming an increasingly accepted part of health promotion. One current trend in this context is the use of modern technologies in the studio, such as touchscreen-based entertainment solutions with, the use of social networks such as Facebook or web-based software systems to assist studio management. In this field, in particular, we offer quite a number of solutions for the fitness market.”
Thomas Wedekind, Precor Deutschland
“FIBO once again provided the opportunity to successfully present our product innovations this year, as was confirmed by the large number of positive customer comments. While the number of visitors was lower, the high quality of the discussions and the noticeable increase in order volumes show that we are on the right track with our product innovations and with our newly positioned team. It was a successful presentation for us.”
Arie van Winkelhof, Managing Director, gym80 International GmbH
“After an interval of several years we are back again this year with a large stand. From a marketing perspective this has been more than worthwhile. It was a resounding confirmation of the brand’s communicative power. FIBO is an information trade show for the entire industry and we would wish that it continues to develop into this direction.” Mirco Schöning, Head of Marketing, ATLANTIC MULTIPOWER GERMANY GmbH & Co.OHG
“At FIBO we saw once again that visitors are looking for solutions in the field of exercise therapies with a medical basis and prefer high-quality training equipment. Besides, there is an unbroken interest in training diagnostics. The trend in the training for health segment will continue.”
Dr. Hartmut Wolff, Managing Director, Dr. WOLFF Sports & Prevention GmbH
“This is our first time at FIBO, as Queenax is only one year old – and we love it! Our aim was to establish international contacts to market our product, and I can say; we more than achieved that aim. In particular, we had customers from the Middle East, notably from Dubai, Qatar, Lebanon and of course from all over Europe. We will definitely be back in 2012!”
Alessandro Pontani, Product Manager AFO s.r.l. / Queenax
“We have been exhibitors at FIBO for ten years and feel very much in the right place here. We meet all our existing business partners and trainers here and, needless to say, succeed in winning new ones every time.”
Hauke Ralfs, Head of Marketing, MOVE YA!
“We primarily frequent marathon trade shows, this year is the first time we are presenting ourselves at FIBO and we are really satisfied. We are quite pleased to see that there is a market for our products even at the leading fitness trade show. This is obviously a very international trade show. Our customers came from all parts of the world, from right across Europe and even as far as the USA.”
Ulrike Schneider, Rheinsport for Triumph International AG
“As a young company we are very grateful that funding from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie - BMWi) is available for FIBO, since without that a small and only recently founded company like ours would not be able to present itself here. At the Forum for Young Innovative Companies we felt very much in the right place, and we are most impressed by the dimensions and the opportunities of this trade show.”
Dirk Pfeffer, Head of Sales, leguano GmbH
“The history of our company is very closely linked to this trade show: in 2010 we were a totally new company, and the development since then has been just incredible! Now we even won the FIBO INNOVATION AWARD with our new product, which makes us very proud indeed. Our trade show participation this year was successful beyond all our expectations: we were able to win customers and business partners from Israel, Canada, Qatar and Kuwait, and even got an invitation here to take part in the Fitness Trade Show in Melbourne, Australia”.
Daniel Borschel and Marcel Wergen, Managing Directors, Cube Sports GmbH, realpulse GmbH
“For us the trade show was a success. Visitor quality continued to rise. People coming to our stand already had concrete plans and ideas which will also be realised subsequently. For the fitness and health segment the upward phase continues.”
Jan-Erik Matthei, ConceptM GmbH & Co. KG
“The response at our stand was excellent, and our new automated line of equipment was very well received by the large number of trade visitors. Our production targets the superior fitness studio segment and health sector institutions. At FIBO we made contact with the appropriate partners.”
Achim Schnell, Management SCHNELL Trainingsgeräte GmbH
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