Together again

Glass Times editor Nathan Bushell reports on last week’s Glazing Summit.

The 400+ people who gathered in the conference centre at Edgbaston Stadium on October 21 represented £2 billion of business value.

This was organiser Andrew Scott’s opening remarks after we were herded into the presentation hall after coffee and bacon sandwiches in the ante room.

I’ve yet to gauge people’s responses to the event, but I came away with all sorts of mixed emotions. Mainly, it took some getting used to being alongside those 400+ people, and I don’t think I was alone. Greetings varied from fist-bumps to enthusiastic hugs, but the pleasure of meeting up again was universal.

Also, out of those 400+ people, I wanted to talk to the majority of them. I’ve already been having text and email conversations with people I didn’t get round to meeting saying that we’ll try again at Pigs and/or the G Awards.

We’ll explore the content of the panel discussions in Glass Times in due course, but meeting up with people was definitely high on people’s lists of priorities. It is also given as a key reason for attending the FIT Show next May.

The topic of discussion from many people was that from March 23, 2020, onwards, business leaders simply wanted to do the right thing, and to not expose their companies to more risk than they were already exposed to. However, in doing that, they were often not prepared for the subsequent increase in demand, and the accompanying supply problems.

I think many people took the opportunity to share those experiences, and if the Glazing Summit achieved nothing else it was still a success.

However, we learned about consolidation, diversification, and resilience, and we’ll talk about these in future issues of Glass Times.