TRADE AND THE SHOW

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 72, 26 March 1934, Page 8

TRADE AND THE SHOW

, In earlier times national and local fairs played an important part in trade. Merchants brought the wares of the world to a centre where buyers could inspect them and make their purchases. Improved communications have changed this. Buying and selling can now be carried on at all times. The annual fair is not necessary for this purpose. Yet the fair, in modernised form, remains because it is a useful and even indispensable part of the trading system. This fact is well illustrated at the Wellington Easter Show. Trade has grown to such dimensions that it is difficult for the ordinary buyer to obtain a wide view of its ramifications. He may wander around shops and warehouses for days without beginning to understand even what his own country can supply. Exhibitions help to educate him. For this reason we have exhibitions ranging from local displays to the British Trade Fairs and the great Empire concentration of industry at Wembley. The Easter Show is not, of course, to be compared with Empire exhibitions, but it serves a similar purpose. By bringing under one roof classified displays of the products of primary and secondary industry it informs the buyer what his own country has to offer. The range of exhibits at the Easter Show is acknowledged to be wider than at any previous annual display. Not only is there a remarkably fine exhibition of the products of New Zealand industry, but other courts show what the buyer may choose from the United Kingdom and Australian markets. In speaking at the opening of the Show, the Minister of Internal:? Affair s; emphasised the importance of organised selling. Because this has been rather neglected in the past such opportunities as the Easter Show affords should be used to die full by manufacturers, traders, and the public. Organised selling has not had the attention that it needs. Manufacturers and traders may say that they have done their utmost; but even the well-informed buyer can walk round the Easter Show and exclaim many.times: "I didn't know that we made all these things here." It is to the decided advantage of both buyer and seller that the quality and range of manufactures should be more widely known. With such knowledge the buyer is prompted to ask for the goods that he has seen-and, if they are not readily available in the shops, to inquire why. Such inquiries, following an initial acquaintance gained at the Show, may well be even better than tariffs .in encouraging localindustry.