French trade show opens doors to UK retail

The organisers of

France’s IDEF expo

have told MCV the show will be perfect” for any European retailer that feels shunned by E3 – and that it is the only expo to offer previews of Q4 titles with plenty of time for UK buyers to purchase stock before Christmas.

IDEF, now in its third year, is particularly geared towards French, Spanish, Italian, Swiss, Belgian and Dutch buyers.

But president of French publisher trade body SELL Jean-Claude Larue told MCV that the show could expand to welcome UK retailers – and that it could make more business sense for them than other shows such as E3 and Leipzig.

E3 has become too big, far too big, for European retailers to really benefit from it,” said Larue. We do not want to get anywhere near that size. We don’t want to be the size of Leipzig, either. Our vision is for people to come and do business efficiently. That’s not to say IDEF isn’t fun. But it’s not for messing around, either.

Of course we would welcome UK retailers to the show. We have all of the major publishers showing off their Christmas titles here, which is very useful to the buyers who visit us from all over Europe. It’s more convenient that running around to all the separate publisher shows.

And we come earlier than Leipzig, which is a great show – but may be too late for buyers looking to the end of the year.”

Canne’s IDEF runs from Tuesday, June 24th to 26th.