Exclusive: Brand Events reveals new events for 2014

Brand Events will be launching a series of new consumer events in 2014, as well as a specialist and leisure division within the company.

Brand Events will be bringing the Top Gear brand to Barbados this year
Brand Events will be bringing the Top Gear brand to Barbados this year

The news comes as the business, based in London's Earl's Court, filed its latest financial results with Companies House for the period ending 31 March 2013. It saw group profit accumulate to £4.081m, compared with a loss in the previous financial period of £1.152m.

The new launches will include the London Classic Car Show at Excel in January 2015, as well as a summer event called Bike Nation aimed at motorcycle enthusiasts. 

Brand Events is also embarking on a new venture with TV personality Kirstie Allsopp in the guise of The Handmade Fair, a craft event offering attendees the opportunity to learn new skills and participate in classes with experts. It is scheduled to take place this September at Hampton Court.

Chris Hughes, chief executive of Brand Events, told Event: "With these new launches we are going back to our basic core strengths, plus we like inventing and creating new brands. As a company we got very big very quickly, and when we sold Taste Festivals last year we were able to question what sort of business we wanted to be, which was creative.

"We've got lots of new ideas and the money and people to launch them now. We have spent the last year preparing for that. The previous year we spent fixing the problems of over stretching all over the world."

Internationally, the company will be launching its Top Gear Festivals brand in Barbados this year at Bushy Park Circuit on 17-18 May, and will be introducing a Taste of Perth event in the same month.

Brand Events has also bought 50% of Keswick Mountain Festival, an outdoor adventure sport event in the Lake District organised by Elev8 Events, which this year takes place between 15 and 18 May. 

It has also acquired the London Pet Show from QD Events and is looking to run the event in accordance with TV programme Super Dogs, hosted by Ben Fogle. The company will also be launching a national version of the event in September at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre with Brand Events' inaugural Pony Show to run alongside it.

Hughes said Brand Events set up its specialist and leisure division because of new opportunities in Britain. "We think where the opportunities tend to lie is increasingly on gatherings for specialist audiences and to a degree it is easier here than thousands of miles away. 

"What we would like to do is look at the subject and see how we can do it differently, which is why events like The Handmade Fair and the Keswick Mountain Festival are exciting, and what we can do with the pet shows is create a sense of showbusiness around them."

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