I went along to PPD Live 2018 at the Ricoh Arena on Tuesday. It was a shadow of its former self - loads of room to move around as there were very few people there. First time i went was about 3 years ago and they had the main exhibition area plus the basement, a separate 'fashion' show area and stands in the main concourse. This year its just the exhibition hall and that wasn't what you would call full of stands.

I would guess that the Printwear & Promotion organisers will be rubbing their hands in glee as it would appear that moving P&P forward in the calendar so that it is only a few days after PPD has had (what I suspect) was the desired effect. When the two shows were a month apart they didn't really clash and a lot of people in the industry could do both. But now they are only 4 days apart I am guessing that a lot of people will just do one of them and will plump for the bigger and more diverse show - P&P. Its a pity as the PPD show at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry is a differant animal to P&P at the NEC. Personally I think there was room for both of them - while they were a month or so apart. The atmosphere was always a bit more relaxed and traders seemed to have more time to talk to everyone.

Be interesting to see what P&P is like this year.