15/25

It was exactly 15 years ago, in November 2006 that the first issue of Trade magazin came out, debuting at the Foodapest trade show. You can find the 100-page magazine on our website, just like all other issues: the cover story is the KMÉ campaign of the Agricultural Marketing Centre. We were very proud and very curious how the market would react – what will old partners think and will we get new ones, will we be able to stay on our feet? These questions were answered pretty quickly, although it wasn’t easy to survive the economic recession that started not much later.

From the nearly 25 years I have spent in the FMCG trade 15 have been dedicated to Trade magazin. At the anniversary gala dinner of this year’s Business Days conference I talked about how this story started, while we were watching a retrospective video about the past years, titled 15 years in 15 minutes – showing where we started and where we are now at the moment.

A big part of our team have been working with me for 15-20-25 years, we are a stable unit even if new colleagues have also joined since the start. We also needed a bit of fresh input, a new impetus. Some stayed with us, while others left after a while. But it works the same way everywhere. The main thing is that the team is together and we keep going forward, and this isn’t only how we feel but can also be seen from the outside.

This year’s Business Days were special, as the event is different every year in terms of complexity, challenge and success. This was the first time that the programme commenced with a HoReCa day. In the FMCG market this is the sector that was hit the hardest by the pandemic and needs the biggest team effort, collective thinking, and experience and information sharing. On the first day we did our best to provide these to the participants. Next day we continued the work with wholesalers, Hungarian-owned retail chains, franchise networks, tobacco shops – there were roundtable discussions, presentations and conversations. On the third day we talked about sustainability, e-commerce and the success trio: discounters, drugstores and pharmacies. The report on the conference is the main topic of the present issue and of course days four and five will be featured in the next issue of our magazine; what is more, the summaries of the research on retail channels, consumers and brands will also be collected in the next issue.

Just like every year in the Novembers of the last 15 or actually 25 years, we and our partners are very excited as we are getting ready for Christmas. We really hope that there will be no unpleasant surprises waiting for us, and in the next double issue, which will be the last Trade magazin this year and the first next year, we can say a toast to usher in a successful new year – and not online. //

Best regards, Zsuzsanna Hermann, Editor in Chief

This article was also published in 11/2021 of Trade magazin.