PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2019

JUBILEE PET planet Insider Vol. 20 No. 06/19 www.petpla.net 35 PETplanet editor Kay Barton looks back on how a crazy idea became a global brand The ultimate editorial road trip The entire PET industry, all across the world, probably knows about the PETplanet Road Shows, which have taken our magazine’s editorial staff to numerous parts of the Earth – and will continue to do so in future. These Editours are far more than just a long-running editorial story. The idea began as an expanded vision of the PETplanet Growth Market Reports, later Regional Market Reports, of the 2000s. Back then, no one in our publishing house foresaw the extent to which the road shows would develop into their current status: an event with incomparable recognition value on the market. The Editours have been running now for nine years. We have visited 38 countries in total – some, more than once – and kept over 270 tour appointments in total. This, PETplanet’s 20 th anniversary year, presents an appropriate opportunity to review how far we have come. The idea of the Editours, of visiting PET makers in various countries along the road, did not spring into existence, fully formed and entirely grown. Back in 2010, Editor-in-Chief Alexander Büchler had, for reasons of flexibility, carried out a Regional Market Report using his own Motorhome: a Laika model built on an Iveco chassis. In this, he travelled from Germany to various PET compa- nies in Finland and the Baltic region completely by road and, for the first time, without a flight or hotel. What we did not realise at the time was how this initiative would become the inspi- ration for something bigger. The following year, the PETplanet editorial team was sitting at the Ital- ian restaurant around the corner from our Heidelberg offices one lunchtime, discussing my upcoming half-year expat stay in India 2011/2012, when the question was raised as whether it would perhaps be an idea to travel to the subcontinent by land and carry out editorial appointments from the PET world on the way. Meeting Grom LLC Armenia, 2011 Fellow passengers on board 2011: my wife Eva and Rolf The immediate reaction was that this was a brilliant idea. After further detailed consideration, however, it became clear that the distance would be too great, it would take too long and that crossing through some countries at that time would be too dangerous. Nevertheless, the thought remained and, just a few days later, we had developed a more practical concept: there would be a tour, but not all the way to India. It would travel from Germany to the Caspian Sea, to Azerbaijan. The PET markets of Eastern Europe and the Middle East were exciting anyway. I would plan the entire project through and organise it, and undertake the first part of the tour, from Germany to Azerbaijan, from where I would fly on to India. Another PETplanet editor would fly out to Azerbaijan and drive the motorhome back from Azerbaijan, returning by a different route. We soon determined on a catchy brand name for the vehicle: Editourmobil. Over the following few weeks, co- operators, collaborators and partners agreed to involve themselves in this unusual and perhaps slightly mad undertaking. These included what was to become the main supporter: the Nurem- berg Trade Fair. With its Brau Beviale event, it managed the topic from the trade fair marketing perspective. The momentum built, the partners committed and the mammoth project actually took place. That first time, PETplanet travelled through eleven countries in approxi- mately two months and took the time to analyse the various markets encountered along the way. In addi- tion, the travelling personnel reported regularly from on the road, on PET- planet’s first tour travel blog. I still remember well how, despite all our planning, weird things still hap- pened while we were on the tour. In Yerevan, for example, our esteemed colleague Rolf Sinkovec, responsi- ble for IT and HR and an occasional companion on our tours, was detained and taken away from the caravan in the night by a group of uniformed and armed Armenians. The arrest later turned out to be harmless; it was just the local police, who wanted to know why a German caravan had parked in front of their police station, which had not been recognisable to us as such. The border situations also became increasingly strange, the further East we travelled.