Next year’s Buying Groups’ National Flooring Show is to break with tradition and abandon its mid-week timing.
Next May’s event will take place from 7-8 May: a Sunday and Monday, rather than its previous Tuesday and Wednesday.
The move is designed to tackle falling visitor numbers for the Cranmore Park, Solihull exhibition.
Interiors Monthly has been told that visitor numbers have been falling for a number of editions – there were none in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic – and the buying groups organising the show had discussed a Sunday opening as far back as 2015.
The organisers hope to emulate the success of The Flooring Show, which introduced a Sunday opening several years ago and has seen the Sunday become the busiest of the three days, and January Furniture Show.
‘We had to do something different,’ says a source.