The Time for Travel Retail is over

at least it is in Cannes for another year…

The TFWA World Exhibition & Conference is now finished and all of us who attended, return home exhausted but glad to have participated in this unique event for the travel retail industry.

For me personally, it meant attending it without the usual support from some friends and now ex colleagues at William Grant & Sons. Instead, I had the pleasure and unique opportunity of presenting the brand new Loch Lomond Group range for travel retail across our brands: Loch Lomond and Glen Scotia (pictures below).

The TFWA has also confirmed that the Loch Lomond Group will become members from 2017 and thus for this year, both myself and Scott Dickson (marketing manager) were based at an apartment opposite to the Palais.

On reflection, Cannes remains a fantastic opportunity to foster engagement within the industry by providing:

• access to trade/ customers
• showcase for new products and innovation to come
• opportunity to talk with the trade press
• exchange of ideas amongst those within the industry
• platform to engage in discussions with potential representatives, such as distributors or agents
• insights via the TFWA

That is not to say that the current Travel Retail business model is perfect and I would expect that disruption will be the only way to drive significant change. However more thoughts on that to come on a separate blog in future…

Finally, attending Cannes also gives all of us the opportunity to catch up with people within the industry and I was happy to see a few familiar faces in 2016…until the next time!