"There will not be a new Muba".
This was a first: a final press release for a trade show that will no longer exist starting in 2020. The long-standing MUBA trade show fell victim to the generational divide between the Facebook generation and the baby boomers.
Exhibition manager Daniel Nussbaumer (on the left in the picture: Sabrina Oberländer, Muba) said that the problem was not the number of visitors to the exhibition. After all, it is still well beyond the 100,000 mark.
But the fact is that exhibitors no longer generate sales as they did in the prosperous days of urban public fairs. In the urban centers, the competition for experiential shopping without paying an entrance fee is too great. Internet shopping has completely killed off trade fairs such as Muba and Züspa, giving them the final push into nirvana.
That's why exhibition director Daniel Nussbaumer said at the Dernière Muba: "There is no new Muba."
It would have been wrong to stick with an outdated exhibition concept. The Muba management and the MCH Group are working flat out on a new concept, as was heard at the media orientation. One can imagine many things and (as yet) nothing about it and is probably not wrong to think of a digital focus. Daniel Nussbaumer did not wish to comment on this.
But digital is not the same as digital. It will be interesting to see whether the MCH Group will be one of the first exhibition venues to make the leap from the classic fixation of exhibition organizers on the square meter in the direction that Lucerne Exhibition was the first to describe as a "digital meeting place": The dialogue foundation 365 days a year and eventual bringing together of a community in real space with the means of the Internet. However, this will only succeed properly if the exhibitors, perhaps it is better to speak of providers in the future, also make a mental leap.
