Record!

We closed the Trade Playground of the Business Days conference, which celebrated its 15th anniversary this year. While sitting in the sandbox, we discussed really serious topics, but the atmosphere was relaxed and not gloomy.

During the five days of the conference, 900 guests turned up – more than ever before! The presentations were revelatory and insightful, the roundtable discussions were honest, the contributions were brave and the reactions were positive. Everyone projected an air of “all for one and one for all.” As many of the participants worded it, “here in Tapolca it always feels like we are in a bubble together”, and “the whole place is one big nest filled with love”.

It was really good to be together, discuss our problems and realise that everyone has those problems too. Having a laugh together was a relief, humour was there in the presentations and roundtable discussions, and it helped us overcome difficult issues.

We talked about every challenge in the sector, and no stone was left unturned – it couldn’t be, as the presenters and roundtable discussion members represented their companies and viewpoints at the highest level. This is the reason why the conference hall was still full at 19:00 many times, and so many guests listened to the speakers on the last day too. We were breaking records every day!

It would have been great to celebrate the conference’s 15th birthday with lighter topics, but life had a different idea. It was a real honour that Minister of Agriculture Dr István Nagy thanked us with a jubilee certificate for serving the FMCG market for so many years, by organising the biggest independent meeting of the trade for producers, manufacturers, retailers and HoReCa businesses every year, bringing the whole sector together. Our team will do its best in the next 15 years as well!

Unfortunately there are difficult months ahead of us right now, and it can very well happen that these months will turn out to be years, affecting everyone in the FMCG sector – I hope that we will overcome the difficulties like we always did in the past!

We are going to report on what happened at the Business Days conference in two parts, in the 11 and 12-01 issues of Trade magazin. Before that let me just call your attention to next year’s conference date, so that you won’t miss the event: on 25-29 September 2023 we will be waiting for you again, let’s meet again like we did in the Trade Playground this year! //

Best regards,

Zsuzsanna Hermann, Editor in Chief