One of Europe’s premier trade shows for watches and jewellery, Inhorgenta 2011 continued to make the typical British trade fair look like a farmer’s market in comparison. From the lilly filled entrance hall with exhibition, live music and drinks on the house through to a whopping six huge halls of exhibitors all offering a minimum standard of silver jewellery, this is a trade show that takes it’s closest UK rival, International Jewellery London, and stretches to the size of The Spring and Autumn Fairs that fill the NEC yet without going off topic for a moment or reducing standards.

The lobby at Messe Munich filled with the scent of fresh lillies

Messe Munich easily equals Birmingham’s NEC for size and leaves it far behind when it comes to facilities, having excellent catering inside as well as a large shopping mall to it’s side. Yet what really stands out about Inhorgenta is the calibre of many of the exhibitors:

• Pandora
• Thomas Sabo
• Raymond Weil
• Gerstner
• Just
• Max Frohlich
• Carucci
• Ti Siento
• Condor
• Espirit
• Fossil
• Giloy
• Guess
• Viventy

OK, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In fact that’s just the snowflake on the tip of the iceberg. Thomas Sabo occupied a particularly large floorspace to showcase the Katy Perry tie up, their first ever celebrity face. With their current range of fun rock inspired charms, it’s set to be the biggest shot across the bows of Pandora who appear to leaving most of their charm peers behind save perhaps Chamilia. Pandora sponsored and dominated the exhibition as a whole with a huge two storey space in the lifestyle area flanked by Ti Siento, Swarovski and Drachenfels. In fact just to reinforce the fact that they owned the hall, Pandora had an aerial dancer perform from the ceiling above their castle *cough* I mean stand:

As much as the spectacle of so many stands which easily topped £50k in construction was impressive, the bottom line was all about economics. It was notable that both the German, Swiss and Italian superbrands are weathering the crunch well and are now all aggressively targeting new outlets. I got further confirmation of this whilst talking with Drachenfels who, after some 12 years, are now a well established premium accessory in Germany yet struggle to place their higher end Drachenfels products within the UK market and cite better take up of their lightweight Heart Breaker range there as a clear example of the difference in markets.

Drachenfels are famous for their fantasy styling

Whilst German lifestyle brands continue to create a large swathe of fantasy inspired jewellery that bridges the gulf between Lord of the Rings and Heavy Metal, some new releases include Haribo Bijoux launching with a German singer as it’s celebrity. It’s cheerful jelly baby jewellery comes in sterling silver and leather. Elsewhere Italian brands continued to dominate the classic and classy space with wonderfully manufactured pieces of timeless quality. Unlike the UK lifestyle space which is crowded with edgy, sexy brands like Fiorelli and Adele Marie, few exhibitors were aimed squarely at the fast fashion space excepting perhaps Nieder and Spark who dip a toe in.

There’s no doubt about it. The German economy is doing well and the German brands were full of smiles. The event was full of drinks on the stands, drinks at an after party on the house and drinks on the town afterwards and didn’t seem to be fuelled by a fake need for coercion. Perhaps most importantly the Germans and European superbrands are pointing a finger at how the future lies – providing engagement in multiple dimensions with celebrity support, lifestyle advertising, quality products and big stories behind products that support both the retailer and the end user in feeling good about the product both today and tomorrow.

Next Inhorgenta Munich is 2012.