Corporate development

The MCH Group’s growth strategy is focused on the following strategic thrusts:

The MCH Group earns a large portion of its operating income in Switzerland, where it already has a very strong market position and where only limited potential exists for further growth. The nationally focused exhibition and event market is approaching saturation, and Switzerland is increasingly losing importance as a production location and sales market. Added to this come the negative consequences of the strong Swiss franc.

Since mid-2015, the global watch and jewellery market has been undergoing a fundamental change. A high level of consolidation and concentration is taking place in both production and the specialist retail trade. This is having a marked impact on the Baselworld Watch and Jewellery Show, which is designed as platform for producers enabling them to meet up with the independent specialist trade.

Digital transformation constitutes a major challenge for classical marketing platforms. Consumer behaviour is changing, and new distribution structures are emerging, together with new market participants, new marketing and communication channels, new media and new “drivers”, such as “Big & Smart Data”. A fundamental change is thus resulting in the demands placed on the live-marketing industry: it is required to combine the real and virtual worlds, creating a new “live quality” in this way.

In the 2017 financial year, the MCH Group implemented and launched a large number of strategic initiatives for the further diversification, internationalisation and digitisation of its business activity. The implementation of its strategy is being intensively pursued as the group’s number one priority.

The MCH Group is intending to expand its position in high-quality international collectors’ markets with new, curated B2C platforms. Its collector events strategy is based on four pillars:

In the national exhibition business, the portfolio is to be geared to stable profitability and will be further streamlined. At the same time, new topics are to be taken up and new formats created, as happened in the 2017 financial year with SmartSuisse in Basel and Ilmac Lausanne, among other developments. At the Lausanne location, an alignment of the business model to put the focus on organising is under consideration.

For Baselworld, the MCH Group is intending to focus on the industry leaders to an even greater extent, since they will continue to account for a major share of the market in future too. Following the necessary adjustments to the concept for Baselworld – reducing the duration of the show and halving the number of exhibitors – further concepts are to be developed for the future that are geared to the common denominator of the industry leaders’ requirements.

On 1 May 2017, the MCH Group wholly acquired the MC² ("MC-squared") company group, a familiar and leading service provider in the exhibition and event market in the USA. With this, the biggest acquisition in the company’s more than 100-year history, the MCH Group has greatly boosted both the services it offers and its international position in the live-marketing field.

Today, the MCH Group can serve locally and globally operating customers in all the key markets – Europe, USA, Asia and the Middle East – and in all the different areas of live marketing. It can serve local customers through its on-the-spot companies and globally operating customers through the MCH Live Marketing Solutions network.

In the current financial year, the competences and range of services offered in the field of strategy and conception are to be further reinforced and expanded so as to be able to better anticipate and satisfy market developments and customer requirements. The establishment of the “Agency of the Future” is to be supported, among other things, by structural and organisational optimisations. The options being examined include simplifying the structure of the companies based in Switzerland and aligning the brand architecture. In addition, different units are to be locally united.

The MCH Group is investing further in the digitisation of its business activity. At the forefront here are the development of new digital platforms for the collector events, the digitisation of visitor marketing, and also event technologies for the transfer of information, for matchmaking and for enhanced experiences achieved through augmented reality. At the same time, investments are to be made in a new ERP system over the next few years that will span the entire group.

As of 1 January 2018, the MCH Group has aligned its organisational structure to an even greater extent to the implementation of its corporate strategy. The former “Exhibitions” (MCH exhibitions) and “Venues” (third-party exhibitions) divisions have now been incorporated in the “Global Events” division (Collector Events and Baselworld) and “Events Switzerland & Venues” division (national exhibitions and facility management). In addition, various internal services – namely the developments and services in the digital field and ICT – have been brought together in “Corporate Development & Services”. These structural alignments will make it possible to create and exploit more synergies, both in the development of our international business activity and in boosting the national MCH and third-party events.