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everybody wins . That side of sustainability doesn ’ t get spoken about so much .
“ Most of our stuff does get reused or recycled .
“ Our stand we built for International Confex we will sell to someone else – redesign it because it ’ s modular . It can be repaired , repainted , reconfigured for someone else . We try to do that all the time . Not just from an environmental perspective but also from a cost perspective it ’ s better . Everybody wins . You actually start everything with sustainability in mind .”
“ We try to always reuse , not just because we ’ re cheapskates but we don ’ t want to waste anything . At exhibitions things are only used for two days and then thrown away and that ’ s criminal . The whole industry is so wasteful . We build everything out of component parts that can be reused .”
Reeves believes quality design is crucial to visitor experience .
“ Smiling , people being happy and people having a good experience is what it ’ s all about ,” he says . “ It ’ s all about how you feel . If we can
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make people feel good then we ’ re doing a good job .”
“ Right now it ’ s very easy to stand out in our sector because so many people are chasing after the same thing , down the volume route . But that ’ s not where I ’ m going to smile . That ’ s not what I ’ m about and it ’ s only going to cause more pain and misery . I would rather do fewer jobs that we can really be proud of . On the money side , it used to be number one , but in terms of importance it ’ s now probably 4th or 5th . Yes , we need to pay wages , but
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we ’ re not necessarily looking at the money in terms of deciding what we do .
“ We think ‘ that looks awesome and that will make us feel good . We ’ ll be proud of that .’
“ Just being different and confident in what you do is key . Sometimes we have to say ‘ thanks but no thanks ’. It sounds cocky but we need to look at our core strengths and we really have been undervaluing ourselves for years .
“ The price of our products has now probably doubled or even more so our clients are obviously seeing the value in it . We are breaking records every month at the moment .
“ We want to be different . We want to be better . When we started we would have been falling over ourselves to get some of the jobs we ’ re now turning down .
“ Now we ’ re thinking ‘ can we do it well ? If we can ’ t do it well , we don ’ t want to do it . We had never , ever in 10 years turned anything away
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but now we do almost daily . I always send them somewhere else where I know they can do what they want .”
Reeves has worked in exhibitions more than 23 years – first as an organiser then a contractor so has seen the business from all sides – but says the effects of the past two years has brough the whole industry together .
He says : “ I literally want everyone to do well . I ’ m always shouting about other people ’ s work . We would never have done that before the pandemic . We ’ re all struggling with capacity and trying to give work to each other . That community is something I ’ m really passionate about and really keen it doesn ’ t go back to how it was before .”
Rocket are now blasting off with more exciting projects than ever before .
“ We want to be the company that people think of when they think of something a bit different ,” he concludes . EN
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April — 47 |