British Industries Fair

Hawera Star, Volume LII, 28 January 1933, Page 14

British Industries Fair

(By Sir Gilbert C. Vyle.)

Sir Gilbert Vyle, who writes the following article, was one of Great Britain’s industrial advisers at the Imperial Economic Conference. President in 1926-7 of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, he is an accepted - authority on all questions relating to export trade, and as such is an active worker on a number of Government committees, including the group of business men who direct the Birmingham section of the British Industries Fair. Sir Gilbert is managing director of Messrs. W. and T. Avery, Ltd., the Birmingham weighing machine manufacturers, and their associated companies.

WE were on the threshold of Ottawa when this year’s British Industries Fair opened. The moment was one of drama, because, although many of us had already a shrewd notion of Ottawa’s effect upon the nations who are our customers, there were others who doubted. Would the foreign buyers shun the Fair? They overwhelmed it. The throng of them arriving from overseas was more than twice the size of that which came in 1931. To-day we have crossed the threshold. The Ottawa agreements are the world’s property; and he Avould be a doubter indeed who could persuade himself that next February’s British Industries Fair will not be the better for them. THE 8.1. F. SHOWS HOW TO BALANCE TRADE, The Continent is queuing up. Already six- _ teen European countries are giving their buyers special concessions to come to Britain for the occasion. And why? Schwab, the steel magnate, has estimated that the agreements mean to countries outside the Empire a trade loss of between thirty and forty million pounds a year. The Continent grows a trifle scared. They are realising over there Britain’s enormous buying power and fear they are going to lose some of the trade which they have had in the past. But they know that they will not lose it all. We expressly declare at Ottawa that we were prepared to consider preferential and reciprocal trade with any country outside the Empire on terms perhaps not quite as good as those given within the Empire, yet considerably better than they would be if no trade agreement were reached. Imagine the national urge in each of the Continental peoples, producers everywhere getting together and impressing on their Governments the need to encourage purchases from Britain before this great market of theirs vanishes under their eyes. The time has gone when they could without any control send us products of any kind and price without the slightest intention of taking payment for them in British goods and services on equally favourable terms. In the past we have never had the ma- _ cliinery to control such a situation. Ottawa has given us that machinery and the British Industries Fair is performing an incalculable service in showing nationals of trading countries who in the past have missed their opportunity how to use it in the future by coming here and helping to achieve a more just balance of trade between us and them.

It was Ottawa that showed the way,

WHAT THE DOMINIONS FEARED AT THE CONFERENCE.

The Dominions themselves are already old friends of the Fair, both as exhibitors and buyers. In February they will all be there again either under the auspices ofn the Empire Mar-

Exhibition Opening In February

Good Effects From Ottawa Conference

keting- Board or in the fine ; displays set np for themselves by Canada and India.. _ As buyers, I am convinced, in view ot the very important implications of the difreren■ claiises in the Ottawa agreements, that the hair will be a memorable demonstration of how -the Dominions may profit by the really colossal range of Britain’s production powei. " I m ay explain that, while negotiating the new tariffs, one of the recurring difficulties which we had with the Dominions was their fear that the products we wished to sell to them were exactly those they themselves manufactured. If that were so, naturally they could not have bought from us without putting out of work certain of their own people now engaged in making such products. I need not say that in fact we were under no illusions on the question. We realised clearly that, where a Dominion could produce a stock- line as cheaply as we could, it would be the proper thing for it to carry out its own production. On the other hand, if variety of production were the aim, a special line for the Dominion to manufacture might very well be a bieacl and butter line for a firm at home, producing in large quantities. Here we felt that it was better for everybody that Britain should manufacture efficiently in large quantities than that a Dominion should manufacture mefficien y in small quantities. In this way the people ot the Dominion themselves would be able to buy a special line more cheaply from Britain and increase their purchasing power to that extent, so enabling them to buy either more 1 goods manufactured in their own Dominion or more from Great Britain, thus allowing Great Britain in turn to buy more from the Dominions. SALESMEN ARE THE STATESMEN’S ALLIES. A textile mill in Canada might be able to produce cloth for suitings as good in every way, including price, as those to be bought Great Britain. But men are like women m that all of them do not want to be dressed in the same pattern of a fabric, like a row of policemen. They prefer a change. But the Canadian mill which could efficiently turn out substantial quantities of a stock fabric would become inefficient when meeting small demands foi special patterns; and the Canadian people would be paying prices out of all proportion to those asked for a supply from Britain. Clearly, it would be foolish to attempt to compete with the vast range of patterns which ive would- be able to send out to them from Britain. We on our part admit that they can make the stock lines as efficiently as we can; they on their side grant that the making of special lines is our heritage and our business. The Fair is Britain’s shop window for the display of all such out-of-the-way things; and I would ask those who come from the Dominions, or avlio send their agents to the Fair, to look out for Britain’s special lines. And meanwhile let the British manufacturer be on the alert in anticipation of the visitors who will be arriving at Olympia, the White City and Castle Bromwich., Products outside the stock range carry so much higher rate of profit that an intensive study of the subject will pay him AA’ell, and, if he will con the Ottawa schedules, he will discover just Avhich lines lmwe now an impixwed chance overseas.

Let him give prominence to them at the Fair and let him encourage the people on his stand to study the schedules too and thus be able to clinch sales with definite knowledge of landed costs under the new arrangement. If the salesmen of Britain back up the statesmen of Britain, the alliance cannot fail to pull us through.