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board with the show and over 19 years it grew to be both successful and well-loved by exhibitors and visitors alike . Hetherington built the business and knocked back countless offers , because he was the “ luckiest man in the world ”, running a successful company in a sector he adored and also for fear he might have to get a proper job .
“ As we built NRB and it became more profitable and successful and stable and growing , we got a serious-ish
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offer every year and a half or something like that . All through my 30s and early 40s , people would generally offer a very fair price , but I always used to say to them , ‘ the problem is I have an exhibition here that I ’ m very good at , that I really enjoy , it ’ s very profitable and it ’ s growing every year , if you offer me a sensible price , I ’ ve probably got three or four years ’ money . So if I don ’ t create something I love as much , and I ’ m as good at , and is as profitable as what |
“ Our first edition the other side of Covid was the best we ’ ve ever done . It was an absolute triumph . It was the pinnacle of 19 years of having run this exhibition .”
I already have , in the next three or four years , I ’ m back at square one , I ’ ll have to go and , God forbid , get a job .”
Hurdles His optimism did falter when the business neared the precipice of catastrophe not once but twice .
When the financial crisis hit in 2008 they were “ absolutely butchered ” he
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says
“ That was a horrible , brutal learning curve to drag ourselves out the other side of that .”
But from 2011 the company continued to grow year-onyear until the pandemic hit . Again Hetherington and his team at Holden Media managed to survive by the skin of their teeth .
“ We were in conversations about a potential sale just before Covid hit . The numbers weren ’ t quite right and we still weren ’ t massively interested ,” he says .
“[ The pandemic ] should have killed us . We were a very small company in a very vulnerable sector , hospitality , but we learned our lessons from 2008 . We ran the business really well and we did everything right and we actually we came out the other side . In terms of balance sheet like everyone else , there was a lot of debt , but when we did our first edition of NRB out
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Spring — 23 |