Our journey so far
LISTEX was launched in October 2011 at the London Ski Show as a concept event to allow for buyers and suppliers in the mountain industry to meet at a dedicated B2B event with pre-scheduled meetings.
The event was planned to take place in the vicinity of the London Ski Show on the days before the show opened, so show visitors could travel to the UK for both their B2B and B2C needs.
Founder James Gambrill realised that whilst running exhibitor stands at the London Ski Show he was increasingly spending all his time at the show in B2B meetings. These couldn’t be easily scheduled, and had to be held wherever a free cafe table could be found, or often stood in the walkways of the show with lots of background noise! This clearly wasn’t an ideal setting for meetings, plus it took time away from being on the stands and talking to the public which was the reason for taking a stand at the show in the first place!
After a small but successful launch event in 2012, LISTEX grew steadily adding a spring event in 2014. With the then owners of the London Ski Show declining, LISTEX moved to being a stand alone event from 2014 held at the end of September each year.
Within 5 years LISTEX became a fixture in the calendar of almost all UK ski tour operators – from Crystal and Inghams to small independents. The number of suppliers grew, with many returning every year, and press interest also grew especially with the introduction on the ‘State of the Snowsports Market’ research that was conducted in house and became a key feature of the events and widely quoted in the industry and national press.
The LISTEX forum has welcomed leading speakers from across the industry and beyond, providing inspiration and collaboration for many working in our industry.
In 2020 work began on an online platform was developed in partnership with Bizzyou, the team behind the meetings manager platform used at LISTEX since launch.
This platform – Mountain Trade Network – allowed previous event attendees to create a single profile online, book multiple events on the platform and build their network of partners in the mountain industry. In addition the platform allowed for the development of new services – a press centre, where members could post their latest news to share with the journalists active on the site, and an online resource of videos and documents from the event forums.
With the advent of Covid-19 in March 2020 we were able to quickly launch a virtual event option, with pre-scheduled meetings on zoom (embedded into the platform meetings manager) and forum sessions delivered as zoom webinars. This allowed us to keep in touch with our past attendees and connect with new ones.
Since the restart of international travel in autumn 2021 we have successfully run three events, with the May 2022 LISTEX surpassing previous May numbers and the very first LISTEX Luxury in June 2022 being very well received by attendees – despite the challenge of a train strike! LISTEX Luxury will return as a larger event in 2023.
For the future, LISTEX will continue to evolve as a signature event of MTN alongside LISTEX Luxury and SASTEX. As recent years have taught us, we are much better able to face the myriad of challenges our industry encounters by collaborating, sharing ideas and working together to overcome these challenges and take advantage of the opportunities. The spirit of working together to increase opportunities, overcome obstacles and share ideas is what underpins LISTEX now and in the future. To all of those who have joined us since the beginning we want to say a huge thank you, and to those who have joined us more recently – welcome, and let’s keep working together to ensure our amazing mountain industry has a bright and prosperous future.
