| Well,
I must confess that I was quite disappointed. The exhibition was not
really a large one, less than 100 booths in total, but the aquarium
hobby was limited to 14 booths. Furthermore, the majority of these
booths were "all around" players with canine food next to
"special" fish flakes. A combination which means that the
guy who talks to you doesn't know much about either food. There were
five booths which were presenting products for the fish keeper
exclusively. On the other hand, many big names, like the
Danish firm "Tropica" for instance, didn't participate (or
were not represented).
Being an advanced fish keeper, you could possibly spend some
hours there, talking to the very few who were knowledgeable but
still the point is that in the previous exhibition, there were more
aquariums, more fishes, more color, many more discussions. It seems
that the hobbyists in Greece increase in numbers but the companies
decrease. This was also evident during the last years (many small
lfs closed), mainly due to the internet trade which
"steals" sales from the retailers - indirectly affecting
the wholesalers, too. It is obvious that there is a lesson to be
learned. The "golden age" for the retailer belongs to the
past. The old days, when a filter was sold in Germany for x DM and
the retail price in Greece was more than double have expired.
Everybody can find an online company and order that filter paying
(at most) those x DM !!
You could see many hobbyists looking around, asking for retail
prices and then searching the brochure for the URL. Needless to say,
I do the same all the time. I have found that usually I pay a 40%
lower price when ordering online for the very same item. Due to EU
regulations the Greek Distributor is obliged to give me all
technical support I am entitled to, so what's the reason to pay for
three water pumps when I need one?
New items? Yes, it is evident that the wholesalers import
whatever new comes available. I could see the newest fish remedies,
water chemistry add ins, equipment and paraphernalia. What I didn't
see is swimming fish. There were very few tanks in there and I only
stopped to see two of them, both exhibited in the very first booth
of the exhibition (Aqualand by P. Saritzoglou). Following
that, there were tanks in some of the "fishy" booths,
since most of them didn't even care to set up a tank for this
exhibition. As far as advanced "fishy" equipment is
concerned, there were three which stand out, Aquatica (I.
Paraschos), Aquarius (M.Demetropoulos) and Pacific
Aquarium (M.Lazarides). These were the booths that had some
people you could talk to and seemed to know a bit more about
tropical fish (especially Aquatica and Pacific Aquarium
since Aquarius focuses mainly in cold water fish). It seemed
to me that Aqualand, Aquatica and Pacific Aquarium
participated only because they couldn't avoit it - they simply had
to. If one takes into account the overall level of this exhibition,
then those three exhibitors (possibly accompanied by Aquarius
and a couple of tank constructors) could actually hold their own
exhibition - something like "Fish-Philia 2000".
As said, Greece is not an isolated country anymore. The amount of
information an advanced aquarist can have today is enormous. What I
see in the magazines, read in the E-mails and learn in the websites
I surf daily is centuries ahead. When you compare this exhibition to
the average exhibition of the cichlid club of an average / small
city in the USA the latter is far more interesting. Which shows that
there is really too much to be done on this field, otherwise there
is simply no future.
All comments on this page are the personal opinion of the
MCH
author who participated.
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