A Statement from Table Art: Lockdown Week 3

MD Gary Martin | Dated April 14th 2020:

So we have now completed lockdown week 3. Is anyone else losing track of the days of the week? Getting lazier? Eating and drinking too much? Addicted to any type of news? Looking out of the window and wondering whatever happened to the world that we knew and were used to?

3 weeks of lockdown done and now we are wondering what the government are planning to do next. Reports are saying that our infection and death numbers could be the worst in Europe. There are news features of people’s horror stories of catching Covid 19. And how others are recovering and climbing Everest by running up and down their stairs. This is enough in itself to shake up the event industry. But we are also worried about what we will all be left with when hopefully this lockdown is all a distant memory.

Will we follow Spain and Italy?

Italy and Spain, ahead of us along the coronavirus path, are reportedly going to start to ease their very tight social distance restrictions. We can only wait and see what the results will be of that. It seems as though all countries may have to experiment with a series of multiple lockdowns and restriction releases. Different things may work in different countries. This, of course, leaves us in the event industry in a pretty precarious situation. Our clients are using remote meeting technology for small meetings more and more and are saving money and time by doing this. Fortunately for us however, this doesn’t seem to me to be something that works for larger groups of more than 10 to 20.

What are Table Art Doing?

I think business will need the opportunity to get people together to boost morale and convey a positive feeling even more when the government relaxes restrictions. Hopefully there will be an absolute frenzy of companies wanting to show that coronavirus hasn’t destroyed them. They will want dinners, award ceremonies and conferences to celebrate the return of their brands to the market place.

Obviously the problem for us in the event industry is the amount of time that this could take. Also how we keep our companies in place with trained staff, storage etc. We will need to be ready to step up when the time comes. But we don’t know when that will be! As we know the whole thing depends on either mass testing with a plan to keep infected people away from non-infected or a vaccine.

I think the only one that that will help us in the event industry is the vaccine and it seems that there won’t be one available until much later this year. It could even be early next year as time testing is essential to prevent the chance any other medical problems. With all this in mind at Table Art our plan is to keep our costs to a minimum. We have slowed down on new designs. We are also just keeping key staff ready to go for it when that big turn around comes.We are hoping it my even come in time for our Christmas packages.

The Future for the Events Industry

I am convinced the whole world will go crazy when we finally turn the corner and realise that we are out of the woods. Events will be bigger and better than ever, with new ideas and inspiration everywhere. Those who can ride out the storm will work alongside new enthusiastic event professionals that will want to be a part of an industry reborn. We are still slowly working on a number of projects that we started before the crisis and are chomping at the bit to get these out to event venues as soon as we get the chance.

Keep your eye on our weekly newsletters to keep up with what we are doing. Please let us know what you are up to so that we can share it with our clients.

Good luck and stay in touch.