Interview
Being Mr Creative in the contractor world
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
A dam 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.“ 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
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