How to Gain an Overview of an Industry?
A Comment by Anna Céline Schäfer on Trade Fairs and Conferences as Fields of Ethnographic Research
Emerging oneself in the Anthropology of experts and business can be an overwhelming task. Especially when you deal with an industry as large as the perfume industry and you start from zero – zero knowledge, zero contacts, zero connection (despite the one perfume bottle sitting on your bathroom shelf). You only have to enter a cosmetics store and you will be overstrained by the quantity and variety of little colorful glass bottles on the shelf and the advertisements who tell you that this scent makes you invincible or irrisitible (for example Invictus by Paco Rabanne or Irresitible by Givenchy).
But the fact that behind such a small bottle – one out of thousands – hides a whole big industry of raw materials, chemical processing, olfactory and marketing expertise as well as diverse regulatory sets, a testing apparatus and ongoing innovation is not visible for the end consumer at the shop. Starting from this initial position it was not an easy task to enter a market as big as perfumery. For reference: The global perfume industry had a market size value of 48.05 billion US$ in 2023 and is considered to grow to 77.52 billion US$ in 2032. This is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.51% according to a recent report by Fortune Business Insights[1]. With ongoing innovations and younger generations who statistically consume more perfume and fragrance products than older ones (we are especially talking about GenZ and GenAlpha), the forecast for the perfume market seems promising and ever-growing[2].
Doing basic internet research and looking into each and every website of any perfume-related company (fragrance houses, distributors, producers, retailers, labs etc.) can be tedious – and in my case only led to feeling even more overwhelmed. It became clear that a condensed and structured overview of the industry was needed. And indeed, such condensed gatherings of industries exist in conferences and trade fairs. It should be noted already that presenting the whole industry with each and every member is simply not possible, not even at trade fairs where everybody could theoretically partake. As many other industries there are bigger and smaller businesses, a lot of fluctuation and changes. Trade fairs are only snapshots of the status quo of a highly innovative industry, however they offer a somehow structured display of big players and small startups, a pool of information and contacts, and a way to actually engage with the people who build, maintain and develop the industry. The latter is, at least for me, a good reason to attend conferences and trade fairs. For anthropologists, they offer a rare opportunity to give an abstract industry faces and personalities. As an anthropologist who is not trained to do market analyses but to personally engage with different people and to build close relationships of trust, trade fairs and conferences – although they also contain a certain level of anonymity – are opportunities to find an ethnographic access to the field.
World Perfumery Congress Geneva June 23 to 27 2024
At the end of June 2024 the World Perfumery Congress (WPC) took place in Geneva, a highly international event where companies, organizations and interest groups send their delegates to come together, connect, discuss and make business in a very condensed spatio-temporal setting. The WPC in Geneava took place at Palexpo, the conference and event center of the city which is located near the airport.
I had a full participation ticket, which means three days of trade fair and conference as well as opening and closing receptions. The WPC also had an exclusive app for participants and visitors which not only served as tool for announcements from the organizers but also was designed for easy access and overview of the event for participants.
I already arrived one day before the start of the congress. The official start was on 23rd of June in the evening with a cocktail reception and a first opportunity to network. Many people at the reception seemed to know each other and I stood at the edge of the reception. I had some small talk conversations with people and got to know them a little more, but I left quite early to get some sleep before three intense days of exhibition and conference. Annette Nyqvist describes these more informal but still formal events as good networking opportunities[3], but it can take a moment’s effort to overcome one’s own shyness and to immerse oneself in a room full of unknown people and have small talk with them.
The next day, June 24th started very early for me. After a hot shower and a good breakfast I made my way to Palexpo Hall 1 where the conference and the exhibition would take place. And although I arrived just on time for the opening of the exhibition the halls were already filled with busy people. Via the WPC app I was able to have a look on the floor plan and the conference schedule beforehand and select which talks and presentations I wanted to attend as well as which exhibitors would be worth a visit. In the app, a filtration system allowed me to specifically select the exhibitors who were interesting for me product-wise or expertise-wise. Furthermore the app had calendar function which helped me organize the talks and presentations I wanted to attend and create a schedule for the next three days.
Since the conference had no interesting talks and discussions for me scheduled on the first day, my goal for this day was to immerse myself into the exhibition and network with as much exhibitors as possible. From the last trade fair I attended in April the same year in Paris (in-cosmetics), I already knew that such exhibitions could be very overwhelming and it can be hard to not get lost.
Fortunately, the exhibition hall was comparatively small. I initially feared that it was actually too small to keep me occupied for three days but it quickly showed that there were so many interesting people to talk to and topics to talk about that I did not even finish my whole list of exhibitors in three days. And although the exhibition hall had a manageable size the floor plan on the app and the function of checking those already visited was really helpful to maintain a good overview. During the first day, I only went from booth to booth and tried to start conversations with the exhibitors. In my opinion, trade fairs are perfect opportunities to learn the basic things about a company and their products in a very short period of time and with very low effort. Other than investing time in a long online research and clicking through websites I find it much easier to just ask people about their companies. Especially on trade fairs companies are there to represent themselves and they are happy to talk about what they do, their ethics, their products, their uniqueness and their goals. Of course, these statements should always be treated critically since employees in most cases are required to represent their companies in the best way, but so do websites. Furthermore, it is more personal because you do not engage with an unpersonal website but with a real person working for the company which gives it a face as well as a direct contact to the company and not only an anonymous contact form. Furthermore, it is much harder to reject someone in front of you than to simply ignore a contact request via your website.
The first half of the second day was also filled with visits at booths and many short and longer talks. Some even had an interview-like character for me and I was surprised how open and talkative people were – a whole different experience to those I have made with e-mails and contact forms where in most cases I never got a reply. The second half of the day was then filled with panels and presentations of diverse topics, ranging from human rights and conservation to the creation of emotional scents and the use of AI in perfumery.
While the last two days were very busy, the atmosphere on the third day felt more relaxed. While some people had already left, the others were less busy and more laid-back than before. I suppose that the big business deals had been made on the other days and everybody was happy to have finally reached the end of the WPC. Although it was a great experience I, too, felt a bit exhausted. The urge to go home and to reflect on all the impressions and experiences was huge. For me, the third day ended early and with the closing cocktail reception the WPC was unfortunately but finally over.
WPC was all in all a great experience and retrospectively helped me in several ways to understand the perfumery and the industry a bit better. I was also a great opportunity to get to know the personalities behind the creations and value chains and to establish a network of potential research participants. I would like to take this opportunity and discuss two aspects of the WPC (which are probably similar for most trade fairs) that are particularly striking to me and which seem worthy for a more detailed description to highlight the ethnographic value of such events.
Floor plans and booth sizes – mapping hierarchical industry structures
But the floor plan is not only a means to find your way, it can also help to understand the industry structure – in other words the material exhibition architecture can represent aspects of the industry structure. An example: At the floor plan, there are smaller and bigger squares. Each square represents a booth. Every exhibitor is generally located at one booth, which makes one company equal one square. This means some companies have bigger squares on the floor map than others. This has nothing to do with their long name not fitting into a smaller one but is actually a 2D-representation of the exhibition architecture. Some companies have much bigger booths than others. And when we look into the list of exhibitors we can see many familiar names of renown big brands like Mane, Givaudan, dsm firmenich etc. which are all leading companies in the sector and that are indicated in the bigger squares while other brands and companies that are unknown, are located in smaller booths. The big players seem to have therefore a much bigger presence in the exhibition hall than the smaller ones. In addition, the location of the booth can also be an indicator for the importance and influence in the industry. While the big players are all located rather in the middle of the exhibition hall, most of the small businesses are at verge of the exhibition, a marginalized position in the exhibition and industry architecture. In the perfumery sector, many smaller businesses occupy indeed marginal positions while the leading companies are dominant in the sector.
As I have mentioned before, the trade fair will not enable a complete overview of the industry displaying each and every company. Renting a booth at a trade fair comes with a price – a price many companies simply can’t afford. We are talking about several thousand to almost a hundred thousand Euros depending on the trade fair, the booth size, the marketing material, the manpower needed for the exhibition as well as travel costs.
While the floor plan is there to help me finding my way through the exhibition, it is also helpful to find my way through a hierarchical industry marked by power relations between big and small players. For the ethnographer the floor plan is therefore not only a floor plan but a map of power to gain a basic understanding of industry hierarchies.
Business cards – more than a piece of paper
One practice that has occurred at every booth and that I also observed many times was the exchange of contact details and business cards. At every booth I exchanged business cards with the persons I talked to even though they were not very relevant for my research. Business cards seem to have several functions at congresses and trade fairs. First, they contain the most important information about the person in front of you. This is mostly the name, contact details, the company or organization the person works for and their position. Exchanging these cards is an easy and fast way to introduce yourself to another person and to give them the opportunity to contact you if needed. Furthermore, the exchange of business cards is a way to be remembered. When I came home from the WPC and found myself in the office the next day, I had difficulties to remember all the people I met. The business cards I collected at the WPC served therefore as memory aids to remember the companies, people and discussions. The business card could be understood as a proof of presence so that people not only remember you but also your presence at the event. Last but not least, exchanging business cards is a good manner and a way of appreciating each other. Even though I talked to a lot of exhibitors at the event only a few of them were actually relevant contacts for me. However, I exchanged business cards with everybody I talked to even though I already knew that we might not stay in touch. The practice of exchanging happened on a more symbolic level and often marked the end of the conversation.
Conclusion
This short description of my experiences is not a call for every anthropologist to attend trade fairs and conferences for ethnographic fieldwork. It is rather an impulse to consider especially trade fairs an entrance point when investigating an industry or, like in my case, a whole value chain. Trade fairs are good networking opportunities, they offer direct contacts, first insights, a basic understanding of the industry’s structure as well as an idea about the debates, issues and successes the industry is concerned with at the moment. How trade fairs can be used for actual ethnographic research is further developed, among others, by Hege Hoyer Leivestad and Annette Nyqvist (2017): Ethnographies of Conferences and Trade Fairs. Shaping Industries, Creating Professionals. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
[1] Perfume Market Size, Share, Growth | Industry Analysis [2032] (fortunebusinessinsights.com)
[2] Gen Z and Fragrance Usage: All You Need to Know – Circana
[3] Nyqvist, Annette 2017: Scheduled Schmoozing: Notes on Interludal Practices at Responsible Investors’ Conferences. In: Leivestad, Leivestad, Hege Hoyer; Nyqvist, Annette (eds.): Ethnographies of Conferences and Trade Fairs. Shaping Industries, Creating Professionals. Cham: Springer Nature.
