Welcome to a special edition of BMTV as we are on location at the Spring Fair! This is Europe’s largest trade fair for the balloon and party industry and is held up at the NEC in Birmingham. We visit the show every year to ask the suppliers what trends they are predicting for 2017 and to get a glimpse of some of their new products for the year! So let’s head in!

Northstar Balloons

First up is Northstar who are trend-setters in the industry, unveiling products like the script words at last year’s spring fair. This year they are expanding the range to include the word “hello”, “party” and “baby”. Not only that but they are bringing out new colours such as holographic, rose-gold and two see-through plastic colours in bright-pink and lime-green. These definitely stand out and we’re aren’t sure how they’ll be received.

Annie Escalera, VP of Sales and Marketing at Northstar says that this is ok! Northstar are known for taking risks and setting trends, she says, the marketing is so saturated with same-ness so they’ve got to try new things and see how they are received! The theme that Annie is seeing for this year is rose-gold colour balloons and so Northstar are creating a rose-gold range of their ever-popular 16-inch numbers! We think they’ll go quick! A personal favourite of mine that I saw on the Northstar stand is this Emoji-inspired cat foil balloon, Meow!

Amscan International

Moving on to Amscan’s stand now and we were lucky enough to speak to Chris Horne, the International Creative Projects Manager at Amscan. Chris says that a lot of trends are driven by Pinterest and the biggest thing he is seeing is adding tails to balloons in various designs. Amscan are therefore planning to bring out a range of tails including paper twirls and dots and even these pin-wheel designs.

Chris is excited about the introduction of a new colour to them which is of course, Rose-Gold! They are going to bring this to their numbers, hearts, rounds, stars and the Orbz, Cubez and Diamondz. We are really excited about the Orbz in this colour and we feel it’s going to be a top seller. We keep asking for a sample of one but they actually don’t exist yet! Not even Chris has seen one but rest assured we will let you know when they are available.

Oaktree UK

Next up is Oaktree who make a great range of UK-Made balloons and party suppliers. We are speaking to Andrew Lyes one of the directors of the company who says that the big thing for them this year is strong and vibrant colours with a holographic finish. They have 32 new designs coming this year including this thank you balloon and a range of re-worked Emoji balloons.

Although the designs for Emoji’s are quite basic, Andrew explains that what they have done is to make their designs a bit more interesting and unique. They have tried to add hues to the solid colours like the gradient in the sunglasses or the tear drop. The ever-so-successful Oaktree pink and blue range has also got bigger, with extra relations and family titles in the banners badges and balloons. Oaktree also have 3, brand-new designs of tableware; theres the ribbons and stars which is perfect for any birthday no matter what age or gender, and there’s the pink and blue baby shower designs to match their existing balloons. Andrew admits he wasn’t sure about this at first as he didn’t know if people would want to reveal the sex of the baby at the shower, but he has said that they are selling so hence the increased range!

APAC

We then pay a visit to John Penn who is the Area Sales & Export Manager for APAC. APAC are responsible for the Kaleidoscope brand of balloons which include the fantastic Gellibean balloons which we love! Straight off John reveals the trend for 2017 will be Rose-Gold of course and they have some designs incorporating this trendy colour. This year APAC have introduced these funky waves and swirl air-fill decorator foil balloons that are very eye-catching and we’re sure many people will create very interesting designs with them, they are unique to APAC as well so keep your eye out in our new products section.

Pioneer Europe

We visited the Qualatex stand and met up with our BMTV regular – Mark Drury! Mark is actually the Business Development Manager at Qualatex and keeps an eye out for the big up-coming trends. A big thing Mark is seeing is asymmetrical décor as opposed to classic decorations. These decorations tend to be more bespoke to fit a location and therefore there are lots of margins to be had in that. One example of this is in this window display that was created by Sue Bowler using a variety of pink and gold dot balloons including this polka dot happy birthday foil balloon.

Again there’s this theme of rose gold coming through in the designs. Moving on, another big trend that has been happening is putting confetti inside balloons and Qualatex have responded with this range of colourfull dot balloon in an age range. Mark says that because there are some many colours involved in these balloons, that coordination with other designs is so so simple! You may have seen this next balloon before on a preivous episode of BMTV, but a balloon that everyone seems to be excited about this year is this baby feet bubble balloon. We think this is going to go absolutely made for gender reveal parties when coupled with these he/she latex balloons. Moving on, a big product for pioneer this year is these Q-lite balloons. These are light-up balloons that mark explains are made from the standard quality you can expect from Qualatex balloons so the float time is likely to be increased over other, cheaper light-up balloons.

Unique Party

Next up is the Unique Party stand and we are joined by Jim Cairns the managing director of Unique Party. Their new expanded balloon range includes these starburst balloons that Greg is obsessed with! They are air-filled décor product that comes in a pack of 12 balloons that are similar to the Qualatex taper balloons. You put together similarly to how Mark put together the galaxy ball in a previous BMTV show. How they differ from the tapers is that these have a valve so don’t need to be heat-sealed, making them a less specialist item that any decorator can use! A trend that Jim is particularly excited about is the “hot-foil stamping” of Unique’s party products, which is adding a shiny, foil finish to balloons and partyware. Jim goes on to say that people are generally drawn to the bolder products and this includes shiny foil!

Creative Party

Lastly, we are on the Creative Party stand talking to the Chairman and CEO of the company; Mike Forder. Mike says that what they are seeing this year is an increase in gold and gold glitter, including these giant numbers which then have expanded into the high-ages this year. They noticed that the gold 50 was selling more than any other number which is likely due to the golden anniversaries! This spawned a range of silver and ruby numbers for their anniversary range of party supplies. Note the shiny, lustery theme to the party ware which ties into what Jim Cainrs was saying about it’s going to be a year of foil.

Sue and John Bowler

We were just on the way out of the Spring Fair and we bumped into the Bowlers, Sue and John who were helping out on the Qualatex stand. Sue is an industry instructor and balloon artist and John is the Chief Executive of BAPIA so we thought it would be a good idea to ask them the same questions we were asking everyone else! Sue says that definitely gold’s and pinks are going to be the thing to beat this year, this call for rose-gold was echoed by nearly all of the people we spoke to so we think that’s going to be a no-brainer. A few exciting things that Sue has been playing around with at this event is putting glitter in a double-stuffed balloon to make a glitter balloon! She also tried out triple stuffing balloons with this gold, black and diamond clear balloon. John is feeling very positive about the industry as a whole and is saying that in particular the corporate décor is looking to be huge this year.

So rose-gold, tassel tails, shiny foil products are the things to look out for this year, that’s if for this show, see you next time!

Rob

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