Was it worth it?
Depends!

Because of my disappointment I reflected my attendance and recaptured my impressions I’ve gained through many intensiv discussions during the exhibition.

Those who had expected to see great innovations or stunning inventions at the HOST 2017, may have been a little bit disappointed, like me. During the last weeks in my company’s newsletters I announced the HOST 2017 as the leading fair trade, where you would be inspired by innovation presented by the leading coffee business companies, which you might not miss. OK, this announcement was honest and based on my experience since I attend the HOST for years now.

First of all there had been innovations and interesting news. For example one of the leading coffee machine manufacturers presented an old technology in a new look. They showed a coffee machine in which the ground coffee is transported by a worm shaft to the brewing unit, that looked interesting but it turned out to be totally inefficient because nearly 50% of the ground coffee remained anywhere but not in the brewing unit. What a great innovation.

Another, really leading manufacturer proudly represented the newest models, the trick was they represented them in their VIP-area, well hided to the publicity, later on I new why. Of course I felt flattered by being invited to join this elite group. Welcomed with a nice drink in a fancy environment the CEO invited us to admire their newest models. What a shock…that where exactly the same machines they exhibited outside the VIP-area, only with different colours. My first thought was they were kidding me, but it turned out that they really where proud off this stuff. I left the scenery and couldn’t stop wondering.

From that moment on I decided to concentrate on activities I love and which are worth it: Communicating and having inspiring talks. Unfortunately my first interlocutors were of those kinds you normally try to avoid during your search for interesting talks. The only topics they were interested in were the actual rumours about upcoming acquisitions and mergers. Topics I don’t like to talk about because I neither can influence them nor I’m happy about them. The reason is that merger and acquisitions always mean the loss of jobs and knowledge, particularly the knowledge in terms of craftsmanship because the experienced workers are the first being fired. The price for this is the loss of human capital like heard driven innovation and integrity.

Fortunately my good luck came back. I found a lot of other guys to talk to and they turned out to become my life-savers. We of course discussed about the exhibition and tried to analyse why there are no exceptional innovations or inventions. We agreed that this is a common problem, it might even be a social issue. The European countries seem to be saturated, there is currently no need for invention, things are going their way with the consequence that people become more and more convenient and therefore unsatisfied. Moreover people have all they need- they think, so why looking ahead?

Lucky me that I’m not caught in this daunting vicious. Therefore I’m happy to have discovered a totally different group of exhibition attendants: The Chinese fair participants.

That haven’t been those Chinese people you might think of, or you know from the past decades. The Chinese I talked to were stylish, clever and eager, they were full of enthusiasm and are no longer part of a side group. They are motivated and love what they do. This is their receipt for being successful, they transformed themselves and their economic environment. Quality and customer satisfaction is king. This combined with their discipline and the above mentioned impressions are the reasons why they will become serious competitors for these unsatisfied and convenient players - the games have started. A prove for this is that I met quite a lot of wholesalers who told me that it isn’t anymore a shame, or something you might be blamed for, if you admit that you purchase your products in China because made in China turns out to become a synonym for innovation and state of the art products with promising a perfect cost-effectiveness.

All in all I'm still happy to got the chance to enrich my network, especially to deepen my personal one. One must know that the HOST is a kind of family reunion. You know each other for years, some guys more intensive than others but from year to year the relations become more intensive and deeper. You not only talk about business you also talk about your families, ask for their well-being..., things you usually only ask best friends. Thus the HOST for me is my "coffee-business-family", people I like and love to be together with.

My conclusion is simple: I’ll come back to the HOST. I don’t want to miss to have the chance to broaden my horizon and stay an active, successful player in a fast changing game.

Therefore I will keep announcing and recommending the HOST again and hope to meet you there. I’m looking forward to it.

I like to show some pictures from the HOST