A couple of weeks ago, I posted what I realised at the time was potentially a risky Blog. It was written as a response to a series of conversations which suggested to me that with some companies, confidence was wilting faster than Qatar’s dreams of getting a point at the World Cup. It struck me that some were on the verge of writing 2022 off as a bad job, which I felt was just a wee bit premature.
However, I had little except gut feel to go on. There was plenty of evidence to the contrary; just about every major retailer that was quoted in the media was issuing dire warnings of a disastrous festive trading period. I listen and read stuff (quite a lot of stuff actually): I wasn’t living in a bubble, or impervious to the very real economic challenges that many consumers are facing. I just had this gut feel that things were going to pick up in November. Even as I pressed send on the Blog, I realised it could well come back to bite me on the backside at a later date. There I was, telling everyone not to panic, when in reality that may well have turned out to be the appropriate response.
I was also aware that I may have sounded like the kind of B2B journalist I don’t respect; the Prozac journalists who only ever simper about how great business is, or even how wonderful a trade show or product is, when it patently obviously isn’t. I always said that Toy World wouldn’t do that, and yet here we were, in the midst of a major period of financial upheaval, saying things were probably going to turn out ok in the end.
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