Will a 2006 exhibition buck the trend and successfully lift the curse of the capital?

optician has learnt that the organisers of Optrafair are planning to stage a London-based optical show once more. The Federation of Manufacturing Opticians, currently working on next year's exhibition at the NEC, has started preliminary moves to host a sister event in the capital in 2006. Details are sparse at the moment, but organisers are known to be looking at three venues Ð likely to be either Earls Court, Olympia or ExCeL Ð and although no official timing has been confirmed as yet, a three-day show to take place earlier in the year than Optrafair's spring schedule, possibly in February is favoured. Speculation that the profession would again get a major London-based event followed Optrafair 2003. The plan was to stage the event in 2004, following a poll of more than 1,000 visitors to the NEC event, the majority of whom wanted an annual Optrafair exhibition. However, several weeks after the last Optrafair organisers got cold feet about the idea and announced that 'with current market conditions companies cannot be expected to sustain the costs of such a show' (News, May 30, 2003). At that time the then FMO chairman, David Moore, said he was 'disappointed but realistic'. Now the possibility of the FMO staging a London-based fair has arisen again, this time under the chairmanship of Malcolm Polley. Attempts to stage a successful optical show in the capital are nothing new, but money-spinning ventures for organisers are rare. In the late 1990s a fashion-led event, The Modern Guide to Sunglasses, appeared briefly before disappearing. Then it was the turn of publisher Miller Freeman which staged its London International Optics once Ð at Olympia, in 1999 Ð before selling its rights to owner of Kirk Originals Jason Kirk. Following LIO's cancellation in 2000, he planned to take the show to the London Docklands venue, ExCeL, but that too was cancelled. The FMO itself introduced a London fashion eyewear exhibition Ð Eyefashion Ð which appeared in April 2000 at Islington Business Design Centre, but that event was to disappear, again after only one show.