FEATURE
RICHARD ARMITAGE
EN talks sustainability, associations and changing the face of stand-building
the winner of Outstanding Contribution to the Industry at the EN Elite Awards
T
here are numerous family businesses in the world of
exhibitions, with generations of the same family working
to improve our industry.
Richard Armitage, the recipient of the Outstanding
Contribution to the Industry award at the EN Elite Awards and
MD of Octanorm UK for over four decades, can lay claim to
two exhibition industry dynasties.
“I was in the industry from birth,” he tells EN. “My mother
was a Perton and my father had a company called Springvale
Exhibitions & Electrics.”
Perton Signs was established in 1864 and, says Armitage, was
bigger back then than it is today.
“Not because it’s going backwards, because they’re going
onwards and upwards,” he adds. “Before computers and
digitisation every sign was hand-painted, so there were more
than 100 sign writers round the back of Olympia London and
Earl’s Court at the Fort.”
Their mutual connection to the industry was
how Armitage’s parents met, when his father
used to go to Perton Signs to get signs for
stands that Springvale was producing.
Armitage recalls
Bertram Mills
Circus coming
to Olympia for
the Christmas
season
during his
childhood in the 1940s.
“I fed elephants,” he recalls. “I took a lion cub for a walk on
Blythe Road. I knew Coco the Clown – very nice man. To my
knowledge all the animals were treated very well, and it was a
good way of letting children see the real thing.”
As the Second World War approached, Armitage’s
grandfather on his father’s side was tasked with creating
blackout blinds and ultimately sold his business to Beck &
Pollitzer, which became Beck Exhibitions before eventually
forming part of another well-known company today: GES.
Despite his exhibition industry pedigree, Armitage never
wanted to enter the business himself.
“It was totally driven by unions, which were a nightmare,” he
explains. “It was a lot of late night working – ‘ghosters’ as they
were called – weekend working, and it wasn’t very sociable as
a business. I never really saw my father; he’d come in after I’d
gone to bed and leave before I got up in the morning.”
Armitage instead entered the world of advertising in sixties
London, working in various agencies and focussing on
television and international advertising.
“It was immense fun,” he tells EN. “You could pack up
on Friday and have another job on Monday in those days,
it was different to how it is today.”
A successful stint advertising baby food for Glaxo
resulted in a job offer with Nestle in Vevey, Switzerland,
targeting Africa and the Middle East, skiing at the
weekends.
It was during this time that Armitage first
came into contact with Hans Staeger, a
German who was at that time running
an exhibition contracting division of an
advertising agency. Staeger had been
involved in the design of a plastic clip
system to hold sheets of glass together
for shop displays, and Armitage had
an interest in using the system for his
own promotions.
When Armitage’s time in
Switzerland came to end, in 1968,
he returned to the UK and was
visiting his uncle Bill Perton (father
of Perton Signs MD Mark Perton)
when he came across the same plastic clip
system.
“A businessman down the road had gone
bust and owed him money for sign work and
so he had just cleared out his office,” explains
Pictured: Richard Armitage with
Armitage. He immediately got on the phone to
EN Elite Awards compere rugby
Staeger and went out to visit him in person.
legend Phil Vickery
exhibitionnews.co.uk | February 2019
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