Exhibition News February 2020 | Page 14

News Focus Community power From butcher to his first million - Ari Feferkorn shows how communities can help to build successful events A ri Feferkorn, MD of Jtrade is close to making his first million after he decided to launch an event for the Jewish community two years ago. The 28-year-old, who moved to London from New York nine years ago, started out as a butcher at a kosher meat plant. He said: “I started out on the minimum wage, working long hours and doing hard, physical work. After a year I was promoted to factory manager and two years later I was offered a job at a construction company. Within two years I opened my residential construction business.” Feferkorn became increasingly aware that building his business within a community paid in dividends. He adds: “70 per cent of my business came from my community and all of the suppliers and installers were too. Everyone I worked with everyone from architects to solicitors, decorators to scaffolders, so I decided why not produce an exhibition called JTrade for the entire community.” Feferkorn doesn’t do small, he went straight to the Business Design Centre: “People thought I was crazy taking such a big risk trying to fill a large venue. Everyone kept telling me it’s never going to work but I ignored the voices and decided to go for it. “I started advertising in local Jewish papers and teamed up with a fantastic local ad agency. We had a lot of buzz around the event, but no signups 14 — February and I was starting get get incredibly nervous. I was determined to make it work, so I started to speak to Jewish community leaders across the uk, to spread the word, and I spoke at local synagogues. I also went to a lot of networking events reaching out to people, and slowly the hall started to fill up.” He managed to get 180 stands, 3,500 visitors and they were shortlisted for an EN Award. In 2019, he decided to expand into ExCeL and secured 280 stands and £600,000 turnover. This year, he’s targeting 380 stands, 6,000 visitors and £1m turnover. Feferkorn believes community events can only grow either though social platforms or by location. He adds: “What I have learned it that community is like family, when you need a plumber or someone else, who do you use? Friends or family right? And we are a very big family with 100 thousand people and it’s very easy to connect” JTrade secured a 75 per cent rebook onsite with glowing testimonials from exhibition companies that said the event has a ‘personal touch’. What next? “We are launching kTrade, a kosher food show at ExCeL London this May, the brainchild of our MD David Lubelsky, whose family has been in the food business for over 30 years. We are bringing together thousands kosher brands from around the world, with companies from USA, Europe, Israel and South Africa.” EN