Adam Aston is a UK event institution in his own right and tells Paul Colston here about how his Creative Hire/Creative Live events contracting businesses have grown exponentially post Covid.
Adam Aston, as many have done, fell into the events industry. His career started with a tough grounding in a saturated sales environment in London when he answered an advert for a sales post dealing with exhibitors.
Now, 24 years on, he is part of a major contractor’s ownership team, along with Wes Britton, Simon Clifton and Steve Barnett, at UK, Midlands-based Creative Hire and its more recent ‘relative’ Creative Live, which is making a big splash with many newcomers to the industry and in emerging market areas.
Entrepreneurial spirit
Sometimes rewards do come to those who wait, but during Covid Aston and his team’s entrepreneurial spirit was at its best and they decided that the time was right to invest and take advantage of some other companies who were moving out of the market and letting event furniture stock go at bargain rates – up to 48 trailers in all.
“We saw a gap in the market,” Aston says of that move in 2021. The company now stocks 60,000 pieces of furniture.
Creative Hire was already a steady business when Aston joined five years ago, if, perhaps, not as plugged into the events sector as it could be.
Adam Aston
“The company had invested heavily in stock, but the events market barely knew the brand,” Aston notes.
It was a marriage made in the Midlands and meant Aston could use his experience, contacts and considerable people skills to market more directly and harness the full power of the Creative offer and its team. The company quickly moved from third party contracts to supplying direct.
The key to surviving Covid times was keeping hold of stock and hanging in the business. “We stayed strong and resilient,” Aston says. Fast forward, and by 2022 the company was servicing 170 events direct, including exhibitions, conferences, outdoor events and many other corporate gigs. The running tally now for Creative is up over 270 shows as an official contractor, while supporting 400 events in some capacity.
“The market was clearly there, as we thought, and business has flooded in,” Aston explains, and says it got so intense that he has finally moved from his London home turf to the company’s Midlands base near the NEC.
Aston is an exhibition industry veteran and specialist, so much of his business is still exhibition based I assumed?
“I like expos because of the rigid planning and process, and reliability of the whole system, but the brand activation side and meetings business can be very exciting and is undoubtedly growing and maybe even is more lucrative. However it is less stable due to its ‘one-off’ nature, even though the agencies we work with deliver some huge conferences and corporate events.”
Aston’s heart is clearly still with the exhibition side, but that discipline of process and practice has stood the new business in good stead, as the urge to quickly expand abroad has been tempered by building strong steps forward in the UK market.
Red tape and tariff type issues to be faced when branching out (in Creative’s case into mainland Europe) are keeping Aston and his team’s focus firmly on the UK for now where he believes there is still much scope for expansion.
So, what of trends and approaches in the contractor and agency market?
Aston is a believer in simple strategies and delivering on promises. “The idea is not to over-complicate things. Look after your clients, ensure your exhibitors get the best out of the show/event, and the rest will flow.”
Industry has work to do on recruitment
We touch on the question of the difficulties, post-Covid, of recruiting talent into the industry. Aston says it is a challenge and that the industry has work to do to raise its appeal – certainly on the contracting side the business is often thought of, he says, as a bit on the “dirty side”. Universities and colleges could be doing more, he believes, to showcase the opportunities in our events community. His company is also offering opportunities for apprentices and tries to recruit direct if possible, he says.
Be Creative with sustainability
He is also a strong supporter of moves to improve the sector’s image for pursuing the sustainable agenda and welcomes the ‘Better Stands’ initiative from UFI to put in a certification process to ‘recognise’ those striving to cut out waste and move towards more sustainable practices. “But,” he cautions, “it is not how you build, so much as what you do with it,” Aston adds, underlining that Creative is a standard bearer for the modular approach to stand building.
“Here,” he believes, “the UK is a frontrunner in terms of sustainable stand construction and practices. You have got to be able to answer the sustainable questions, now uppermost in clients’ minds.”
A third of the team’s businesses, Be Creative, is a pioneer in exactly this field – supplying sustainable modular solutions for stands and feature areas.
Aston believes there is big demand for crossover events as the old categories blur. “Every event today is now like a consumer event,” he says. “Flagship events have revolutionised that model and there is demand for better and more attractive installations. Designs have to be on point.”
Aston’s businesses cross over numerous sectors: energy, green, cyber security, as well as finance and consumer sectors.
One of his secrets for success, he says, is not to focus on what competitors are doing, seeing that as a negative approach. “Our teams have full autonomy to make things happen.”
“Engagement” is another big word in Aston’s lexicon; and he hammers home the importance of working in tandem with clients to fully understand what they want to achieve, before beginning any business proposal. “It is not like the old ‘transactional’ days. It is now about co-operation and risk sharing.”
He is still enthused by all the creativity about and marvels at the new LED and touch screen walls that can transform any stand. “People are also using colour again, and going for height with their displays. Textiles also play a big part,” he says.
As the enthusiasm for live events and using the medium of events as an increasingly popular and effective marketing channel grows, so it seems does demand for services from those who can deliver for the modern market – supplying sustainable, attractive, well-priced products and services to engage and bring the heap of bright ideas out there alive on the show floor.
Creative Hire is mining that meetings seam and Adam Aston and his team have plenty more ideas coming down the pipeline. He admits that, in the midst of this strong demand, a big challenge down the line is maybe to streamline the various ‘Creative’ companies’ offer into a clearer profile for clients to understand. Meanwhile, Aston and his team continue to be Creative and for hire.
