Profile: CloserStill Group headed up by three women who play a key role in the wider success of the company. Group Event Director Laura Shapiro, Group Financial Controller Vanessa Canale-Parola and Group Finance Director Sam Starr lead the growing team in the city. Sam said: “The company began in a pig shed in Honiley not too far from here! It then moved offices and arrived here at the university in 2019. “The founders identified two sectors that they wanted to run specialist exhibitions in – healthcare and tech – because they saw them as being as close to recessionproof as you can get. “Coming through the pandemic as we have done, it appears they got that call right!” The events sector, however, faced more turbulence than most as Covid-19 struck. CloserStill was all set to open a show in Spain back in 2020 but had to cancel on the day as the country went into lockdown. Across the world, live events and exhibitions were postponed or moth-balled – hitting the sector hard. But CloserStill has emerged stronger. During the pandemic, the company quickly pivoted its events to digital, from newsletters and webinars to hybrid and virtual events. Whilst CloserStill prides itself on the unique physical, face-to-face event experience, it was keen to ensure that businesses still provided the event communities with the unique, up-to-date content and lead-generating opportunities that stakeholders were used to. The digital growth was such a success in increasing engagement with event audiences that the company has continued with digital activities to complement physical events. Across the business, the total virtual event attendance was over 49,000 and the team’s efforts have been honoured with four Digital Event Awards in the past two years. It was also a time when the finance team was put to the test by the unprecedented nature of the pandemic and the fall-out from it.
Global success story made in Coventry and Warwickshire A business that was started in a pig shed in Warwickshire less than 15 years ago is now bringing home the bacon on a global scale. Exhibition company CloserStill Media was established in Honiley by Phil Soar and Andy Center in 2009, launching the London Vet Show followed by the purchase of The Pharmacy Show as they looked to grow the business quickly.
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It is now a circa £100m revenue company which has offices around the world, and despite the head office having moved to London, close to Olympia, it still has strong roots in the region where it was founded, with close to 40 people operating from its office at Coventry University’s TechnoCentre and events taking place just up the road at the NEC. The Coventry office is home to the crucial finance function, as well as a team of salespeople, and is
“The finance department has played an even bigger part over the past couple of years because cash has been a big concern,” said Sam. “We hadn’t run any large-scale events since March 2020 until recently and, when we went into lockdown, we had to make a lot of financial decisions on how we were going to work with the banks and work with our backers. “We had to look after the cash and there were a lot of events we were about to hold which were rolled into the following year. As it turned out, many of them were rolled over again because the restrictions lasted longer than expected. “It is worth noting that we bought exhibitions in 2019 and haven’t been able to run those events until now. We spent £15 million on an acquisition and have only just this year been able to run one of those events. “Around 80 to 85 per cent of our customers chose to roll over the bookings – in some cases for up to three years – which was important for us and that showed a huge amount of trust and has stood us in good stead.” Instead of cutting back in the pandemic, CloserStill Media has continued with its ethos of investment. In Coventry, for example, the sales team has grown from three to eight since January 2021 and there has been significant investment in the company’s global finance systems. www.cw-chamber.co.uk
