Three of the powerful images in use on the Expo Erotica website to promote the Birmingham NEC event set for September 27-29

EXPO EROTICA KINK-FRIENDLY EVENT SET FOR NEC IN SEPTEMBER

Word slipped out earlier this month that a big new adult expo called Expo Erotica, with an apparently substantial focus on fetish and BDSM interests, is planned for Birmingham’s NEC at the end of September. And if its title evokes ,for you, those legendary/notorious (delete as appropriate) Erotica UK shindigs of yore, which took place annually at London’s Olympia between 1997 and 2010 (with a final outing at Tobacco Dock in 2013), then you are surely not alone.

This new event was originally intended to launch in 2020 in Telford, until the covid pandemic struck. So an interesting question now, in 2024, must be: will it seek to reprise more than just its predecessor’s name? And another interesting ponderable might be: would anyone really want it to reprise more than that? The answer for you might well depend on whether you thought the original Erotica events helped to popularise and normalise fetish/BDSM culture in the mainstream, as some claimed, or whether embracing kink culture was actually of greater benefit to Erotica, by helping it to appear much cooler than it otherwise would have.

No need to adopt a disguise when visiting Expo Erotica , but if you feel one’s appropriate, this spiky mask might be ideal (promo image)

These days, if you ask people on the fetish scene what they remember about those Olympia events, the answer you often get is ‘the stage shows’. And the Erotica shows people seem to remember most fondly are the ones organised for the event by Torture Garden — which included, most notably, performances in 2007 and 2010 by fetish icon Dita Von Teese.

When the first posts about the new Expo Erotica appeared on social media around February 5, it was not immediately clear who was behind this new event — other than that it presumably wasn’t the original company. The website, expoerotica.co.uk, looked professional enough, but any solid information about its organisers — in its ‘About’ section or other appropriate places on the site — was noticeable only by its absence.

Mission statements, which abound on the site, are all very fine. But for such a major enterprise — which projects selling space to 300 exhibitors and tickets to 30,000 public visitors — inclusion of the organiser’s business details (called the Impressum in Germany) is surely of great importance too.

Expo Erotica expects to start flogging tickets soon. But this might not be the only flogging connected with the event (promo image)

Fortunately there was something about the overall style of Expo Erotica’s initial marketing that seemed strangely reminiscent of some other recent events in London. And when Expo Erotica’s posts on X started to include recycled promo material from the UK Fetish Awards, it looked like the cat was out of the bag. It now seemed a safe bet that the people behind Expo Erotica were the same people who, with previous experience of running the UK Glamour Awards, had partnered up in 2020 with Zara DuRose of ZDR to host those very awards.

If Zara is also going to be involved with Expo Erotica, we imagine she would want to achieve a level of kink cred at least equivalent to that brought to the original Erotica by Torture Garden’s involvement. So the good news here is in some evidence that Expo Erotica’s hosts have been influenced by the structure and presentation of Germany’s big, successful adult/fetish/bdsm events such as BoundCon in Munich and the newer Passion Fair in Hamburg.

Expo Erotica website graphic, showing areas of interest the event aims to cover, displays distinct influence of German event marketing

For example, a graphic on the Expo Erotica website highlighting the topics it aims to cover — sex education, fans zone, BDSM scene, B2B area, workshops, shibari, adult toys, love dolls, competitions, lingerie, fashion shows and sexual health talks — could have come straight out of Passion Fair’s promotional playbook.

The website also invites applications from would-be exhibitors, sponsors and media partners (although the button for this last category currently links to a ‘page not found’). You might put it down to ‘early days’ that no exhibitors, sponsors or media partners are yet listed. But organisers of this kind of event have usually considered it important to get some recognisable names onboard in time for their public launch announcement, in order to seed the bulk of exhibitors space sales and visitor ticket sales that need to follow. It seems a bit risky to have a public launch in which you’re basically only hyping the concept and trusting that this will do the job for you.

Pretty promo picture from the NEC shows how a big bare space like its Hall 1 can be totally transformed with imaginative lighting

One enduring memory from the old Erotica was that the London event’s marketing to potential exhibitors sometimes seemed to reach a fair number of people who didn’t know their way around the adult/kink business. The result was that, at Olympia, you might encounter exhibitors like the furniture maker who had created, at a very expensive price point, a bondage bed that he assumed would sell by the truckload to prodommes and bedroom bondage fans visiting the show. Or the footwear manufacturer who made women’s kinky boots and shoes in men’s sizes without knowing that ways to reach the legion of potential customers for such items already existed.

Both these people had no idea that there was a fetish/BDSM scene all around them, with its own publications and events that connected with their potential customers directly. So instead, they had spent small fortunes on exhibiting for the first time at an event where a large proportion of visitors were probably looking for nothing more ambitious than a naughty video, condoms or a vibrator.

Either aliens have landed their ship in Birmingham or this is the colourful entrance to National Exhibition Centre’s Atrium (promo image)

And that will always be the potential downside for more specialist types of exhibitor tempted to participate in an event that might be aiming to cover all erotic interests for all people. Striking the right balance to appeal both to high street sex-shop customers and people who spend serious money on designer latex clothing or high quality BDSM products without alienating either group is a dark art that the host of any such event must master.

It’s a big ask at the best of times, and in this era of well-established online shopping habits, it may be riskier than ever to aim to fill an NEC-sized space with an expo of this kind. On the other hand though, a big expo with a substantial amount of kink content could be just what the doctor ordered. And with a seven-month lead until September 27, when the first three-day Expo Erotica is due to open its doors, there should be time enough to secure the kind of exhibitors needed to transform this event from ambitious concept to solid reality.

If you’ve reached the end of the article wondering whether this project has legs, we’d like to offer you this proof that it has (promo image)

expoerotica.co.uk

expoerotica/instagram

expoerotica/X(twitter)