Organising SSE07

Sydney Stamp Expo 2007 was a great success.  It was held at the Shannon Room at the Randwick Racecourse from Friday 15 June to Sunday 17 June 2007.

Background

In recent years Sydney has not had a great reputation for organising philatelic events.  This was the view of many people in organised philately from the other states, and it was shared by many others even in Sydney and NSW.  The previous National show in Sydney was held back in 1995.  Two international exhibitions, Olymphilex in 2000 and Pacific Explorer in 2005, were held in Sydney, but in both cases most of the organisation was done by people outside Sydney.
On the other hand Sydney does have a good collector base.  At the elite level, approximately half of the Australian exhibits that have won Large Gold or Gold medals in International exhibitions belong to collectors resident in Sydney.  Furthermore there are lots of philatelic clubs and societies in NSW.  They have been working together in harmony for the last few years.  The association of philatelic societies, PHILAS is well-organised, and its premises have excellent philatelic facilities.
Collectors in Sydney have been aware that there was a growing capacity and desire to organise philatelic events within Sydney.
The Northern Beaches Stamp Exhibition (NBSE) has been run for many years, and has been actively supported by all the clubs in the Sydney to Newcastle corridor.  It has provided a great opportunity for encouraging many of the good collectors in Sydney to judge at the State Level.  Much of the credit goes to Ed Wolf as chief organiser of NBSE, and to David Collyer for organising and implementing the judges training strategy.
Sydney Stamp Expo 2005 (SSE05) was originally scheduled to be a full national show, until Pacific Explorer was moved from Melbourne to Sydney.  We still decided to continue with SSE05 as a State Show.  It was held in October 2005 in a school campus at Blackwattle Bay.  This gave us some experience at organising a show.  There were innovations such as the Judges Tournament, and double-judging.

The Committee

Planning for SSE07 started soon after SSE05.
The SSE07 committee was:
Geoffrey Lewis, President.
Lionel Savins, Vice-President.
Ed Wolf, Vice-President and Volunteers Co-ordinator.
Linda Lee, Secretary.
Gert Ebing, Treasurer.
David Collyer, Commissioner-General.
John Sadler, Public Relations Officer.
Geoffrey Kellow, Catalogue Editor.
Ben Palmer, Events Co-ordinator.
John Moore, Floor Manager.
John Batson, Committee Member.
Maurice Williams, Committee Member.
Jill Presgrave, Bin Room Manager.
Ian McMahon, APF Representative.
Chris Roach, Australia Post Representative.
Paul Fletcher, APTA Representative.

Every member of the committee was fiercely determined to make SSE07 a success.  We all knew that Sydney’s philatelic reputation depended on making this exhibition a success.  There was strong support and no opposition from the other people in the Sydney philatelic world.
The committee was aware of its collective lack of experience.  We were always willing to ask for advice and help from experienced people elsewhere in Australia.  Every request for help or information was given enthusiastically.
In some ways our lack of experience was an advantage.  As a group we would approach each new facet of organising with a fresh mind collectively, and try to work out effective solutions.  I think we have all been on committees, where somebody will knock down every idea with a statement like - “don’t try that, we tried it 28 years ago and it did not work then”.
We live in an age of email.  Fortunately every member of the committee was on email.  This let us do a lot of work yet limit the number of face-to-face meetings.  Lots of activities were handled by sub-groups of typically three to five people.
As President I was greatly assisted by the secretary, Linda Lee, who was extremely efficient, hard-working and capable in distributing information and writing excellent minutes.  In fact my task was made easy by every member of the committee - every person was very enthusiastic and very able - for any different task there was always a willing and capable volunteer.
We decided to have a website, and to use it as our principal means of conveying information.  We were grateful for the efforts of Liz Nakhla, who did a sterling effort in producing and maintaining a very effective website.  John Sadler was pivotal in organising the information to be placed on the website.  The website was an ideal place to distribute information about matters such as transport to the venue, accommodation choices, and souvenir products.  Consequently no printed bulletins were produced.  Not only are bulletins costly to print and mail, but more importantly some information becomes out-of-date as soon as the ink has dried.

The Venue

It has been difficult to find a suitable venue for a National philatelic exhibition in Sydney.  The Exhibition Centre at Darling Harbour, the site of Pacific Explorer, is physically suitable, but is probably too expensive for a National exhibition.  No other venue has the ideal size of 1600 to 2000 square metres.
Torsten Weller of APTA (Australian Philatelic Traders Association) approached me to consider the Shannon Room.  Torsten proposed that APTA would pay the rent, and keep the revenue from selling the dealer stands, as well as admission charges.  We readily agreed on formulas for splitting the various expenditure and income responsibilities.  This system worked well, and I found it was always a pleasure to deal with Torsten.
The Shannon Room with 1200 square metres was smaller than our ideal.  I could readily see the following advantages: an excellent jury room; good parking facilities; good security; and carpet.  Lighting is a perennial problem for philatelic exhibitions around the world, but I could see big potential in the Shannon Room by shining spotlights onto the sloping ceiling.  The disadvantage was that there were no small rooms for meetings or a bin room.

Filling the Frames

For the exhibition to be a philatelic success it was necessary to attract a large number of philatelic exhibits.  Because of the limited size of the venue, we had set a maximum number of approximately 600 frame sides that we could accept.
After we had started our publicity, the FIP announced it would be holding an international exhibition in St Petersburg at dates that effectively clashed with our exhibition.  Also SSE07 was the first Australian national exhibition for quite a few years that was not run in conjunction with any Challenge.
David Collyer, as Commissioner-General, was in charge of our effort.  David worked well with the other Commissioners, and made a big effort to encourage entries from the International Judge/Commissioners.  Visitors to the Show appreciated this chance to see interesting and varied collections from our fellow collectors in Hong Kong, South Africa and New Zealand.  We were particularly pleased with the support from New Zealand, where there was a very effective and capable Commissioner, Tony Thackery.  David also provided a lot of assistance and encouragement to Bernie Manning, who was Commissioner for Victoria for the first time.
A week before the closing date, we had entries for only 150 frames.  After the closing date this number had climbed to about 450, which was the minimum number for a viable exhibition.  The Committee decided to extend the deadline to three weeks after the original closing date.  In that time, we targeted those Commissioners who we felt could obtain more entries, plus some individual collectors who had not entered their good collections.  This strategy was successful and we eventually had 623 frames of exhibits.  We were able to fit this number into the hall by eliminating any wider aisles.

Financial

Even though the maximum number of frames had been allocated, the total revenue from frame fees was only just enough to cover all the expenses of running an exhibition.  Here is a list of the major types of cost, to give the reader an idea of the costs.
Travel and accommodation expenses for jury.
Lighting.
Rent of the jury room.
Hire of computer equipment for the jury.
Labour hire to erect the frames.
Food for volunteers and jury.
Catalogues.
The cost of running the Palmares dinner, where about 50 guests are complimentary.
Security guards.
Parking attendants.
Engraving of medals.

We were grateful that other organisations paid for some of the costs.  The APF (Australian Philatelic Federation) paid for the transport of the frames from Adelaide.  APTA paid for the rent of the Shannon Room and half the cost of the Jury Room, and received the revenue from dealer stands, and the admission charges.
Prizes for exhibitors were donated by various philatelic organisations such as interstate and national philately bodies.  We were particularly impressed by the generosity and support of philatelic societies in Sydney for donating prizes.

Other Revenue Opportunities

Apart from frame fees, there are other sources of revenue to help run a philatelic exhibition.  The most important is the sale of exhibition souvenirs (Product Sales), which I discuss below at length.
Sponsorship.  Millennium Philatelic Auctions provided excellent support to SSE07 by sponsoring the exhibition catalogue.  Millennium also sponsored the awards tags.  Unfortunately we were unable to find sponsors for other aspects of the show, notably the Palmares Dinner.
Supporters’ Club.
Auction sale held during the Palmares dinner.  Items auctioned included Numbers 1 and 75 of the numbered souvenir items.  We appreciated Paul Fletcher’s involvement as Auctioneer.

Product Sales

I want to discuss some general points first.
There are many enthusiastic collectors of souvenir items for philatelic exhibitions.  It was a pleasure for me to behold the joy of these collectors as they adorned various covers with combinations of stamps and asked Australia Post for appropriate cancellations.
However it is also true that there are many philatelists who do not collect souvenirs, and some can tend to treat with disdain those that do.  If everybody on a future exhibition Organising Committee had that attitude, it would be vital that some souvenir enthusiasts were co-opted to the Committee.
Sales of these products can be a valuable supplement to the exhibition’s finances.
The SSE07 Committee realised that any products not sold by the end of the show, will not sell.  It would be totally unfair to the buyers, if unsold stock was sold off at discount prices.
The value of unsold stock is the “scrap value”.  For booklets of 50-cent stamps this is just under the face value.  For miniature sheets with unusual values, the scrap value may be considerably less than the face value.  For First Day Covers, the scrap value is zero.  Consequently our aim was to produce quantities where there would be virtually no unsold stock.
The obvious theme for the exhibition was the 75th anniversary of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  This was very popular with all Australian stamp collectors because of the resonance with the 1932 five-shilling stamp.  We talked with organisers of other exhibitions, and with dealers and collectors of souvenirs.  Thanks to Maurice Williams we worked closely with Australia Post, so they could produce a range of philatelic products to be compatible with this theme.
All our souvenir items would be Australia Post products overprinted with the SSE07 logo, and numbered.  John Sadler liaised with Australia Post on the details - this job was more onerous than had been expected, because of the many changes AP made to the issue program.
We used the website in various ways: we were able to promote and describe the products; we were able to take orders; and we were able to inform the public as to the quantity remaining of each item.  We recommend this approach to organisers of other exhibitions.  We also recommend that souvenir collectors check the exhibition website, to avoid missing out.  John Batson did a sterling job in collating the orders - every individually numbered souvenir was assigned to an individual order.
When we were well on the way to finalising the souvenirs, Australia Post announced the issue of a PNC (Stamp-and-Coin Cover) with the $1.95 Bridge stamp.  The retail value was about $15.  It was difficult to decide whether to produce an overprinted version, because the scrap value of any unsold items would be the one-dollar coin.  However we had noticed strong demand from coin-collectors for the recently issued Ashes PNC.  We decided to have a limited quantity of 250 overprinted, and sell these at $75 each, with a limit of ten per customer.  After a slow start these proved to be very popular, and were sold out before the Show started.  We received some complaints that we did not produce enough, yet none that the price was too high.  This item guaranteed the financial success of the Exhibition.  I notice that the Canberra 2008 exhibition will overprint the Scouting PNC and sell the same quantity at the same price.
Most of our souvenir items were sold out before the Show started.  The remaining items had sold out early on the second day.  Although this was great for the financial viability of the Show, it was inevitable that some collectors who missed out would be disappointed.  This is a tough situation.  If we had produced larger quantities, and demand was not as strong, we could have been left with large quantities of unsold stock.  Maybe the solution is to have one item, such as an overprinted miniature sheet, only available for sale at the Show.  Also, collectors who are afraid of missing out, should access the website and order in advance.

The Actual Show

The exhibition was bustling and busy.  There was a large attendance despite really bad weather - approximately 400 paying customers every day.
The dealers were happy, which means that sales were good.  This means that collectors must have found lots of stamps and covers to add to their collections.
Almost everything went very well.  There were no significant hitches.  The Shannon Room was a very effective venue.  The free parking was appreciated.
One disappointment was the size of “our table” used for SSE07 and Philas.  We had set up a larger table right at the front door.  Late on the setting-up day it was realised that this location was in breach of regulations for fire safety, as it could obstruct the exit in an emergency.  Consequently we had to re-locate to a position that was smaller and less prominent.
With the success of SSE07, we in Sydney have gained enormous confidence in our ability to organise a National philatelic exhibition.  This confidence has been shared throughout the philatelic community in Sydney and NSW.  It was very gratifying that our success was recognised by our colleagues throughout Australia and also by our overseas visitors.

Geoffrey Lewis