“Europe is a fat cow, it can’t grow any more,” says Roger Shashoua, the man responsible for co-founding international organiser ITE Group and making a fortune from migrating exhibitions into the emerging markets.
Shashoua should know. He made a name for himself launching exhibitions in the emerging markets of China and Russia. His first Expofund capital investment vehicle, he claims, made a return of over 200 per cent on a seven-figure investment.
Now the entrepreneur is looking to enter a new arena with Expofund II, investing not in the acquisition and redirection of distressed assets, but in the acquisition and sale of trademarks and brands. He’s also looking to create an “online market for the exhibition industry”.
The new venture, Global Market Brands (GMB), works as a facilitator for companies looking to take their brands from the mature markets of Europe and the US into unfamiliar territory. In basic terms, it will protect a company’s trademark and brand in the market it’s looking to enter, then match it with receptive companies or associations capable of working with the company to successfully launch its brand in that market.
Expofund II remains the financial engine that makes each project possible.
“There’s simply no growth in the mature European market at the moment,” reiterates Shashoua. “The only growth for any business, long-term, is in the BRIC markets: Brazil, Russia and its regions, India and China.
“But with the economic crisis, no one wants to risk the investment. UBM and ITE are strong enough financially to be able to get into these markets, but even then they can only cover the tip of these enormous markets - you’d need a hundred such exhibition companies for India alone.”
Shashoua co-founded ITE in 1991. “When I went into Russia, no one wanted to go into Russia with their successful shows. But ITE’s success was based on a licence of just four brands.” He also began his Chinese business in 1981 in the same manner, eventually selling it on in 1989.
However, despite the prevalence of people entering and leaving markets all over the world, Shashoua says there is still no market on which to trade brands and trademarks.
So perhaps it is this final part of his new venture that will raise the most eyebrows: the creation of an auction site for trademarks and brand names. “There is no online facility for those who want to sell or invest in brands, and the timing has never been better,” he claims.
The plan is to provide a forum where anyone who wants to acquire, sell or licence a brand can enter and start bidding for it. “The Chinese, who are exporting everything worldwide, are dying for Western brands to stick to their products so they can sell them,” he says.
Around 30 years ago, Shashoua ran a patent licensing company in the US. “If you had a patent and didn’t know where to sell it, you would come to my company - Patent International. It became the largest patent licensing register in America, with 66,000 clients.
“The problem was, there was no Internet exposure at that time; everything had to be done in hard copy or by Telex. I couldn’t see a viable model at the time, so we sold the company.
“But I came back to this concept because of the present economic crisis,” he says. “It works because it gives people a way to profit from their existing brands without risk or investment. It’s like saying ‘I’ll buy some of your shares, and then I’ll make a market for them so that people can buy and sell these shares’. It also gives them an exit.”
Shashoua is now at work setting up the auction site. Initially the business will run like a conventional auction house such as Christie’s in London, but in time people will be able to bid, just as they can on Ebay.
“For the industry, no question, the timing is absolutely right for the purchase, sale or licence of trademarks and brands. An auction site where people can buy and dispose of brands, bypassing Expofund, is the logical next step,” he concludes.
With eight clients already committing their brands, according to Shashoua, he expects Expofund II to be fully invested by the end of the year. It seems he is off to a good start.
