Who are The British Display Society I hear you ask? Well then let me explain. I myself am a Director and Vice Chair of the society and although we have been established for over sixty years, our aims have never deviated during that time… We are a charity organisation who are deeply passionate about driving the future of this amazing Creative and Visual industry. Both for our creative peers currently working in this industry, our amazingly innovative and talented corporate members and those brilliant students who are currently studying the subject and who will become our experts of the future.
Our leadership team are a small band of highly skilled experts who have been within our industry for years working with many premium and international brands. The Society strive to keep Visual Merchandising, Display, Experiential and Creative alive! Call it what you will however the industry is currently in a state of flux. Long gone are the days where our industry peers only designed and dressed window displays. We are now masters of creative and design production, not only for windows and in-store vm but also for pop-up stores, customer experiences, product launches, store design, press days, marketing activations, customer events and photoshoots. Our creative skills are utilised in far more diverse ways than ever before.
The BDS have Centres of Excellence around the world. They are six universities and colleges who we believe are at the top of their game in our subject. These changes within our industry that I’ve mentioned are also being reflected across all of these colleges by the name that they are giving to their courses. Once the domain of pure visual merchandising, their courses now reflect these industry changes and the diversity of skills. Fashion Marketing and Branding are far more likely terms to now be used in academic module titles.
If we, The British Display Society, are to stay relevant to the industry we support then it’s only right that we reflect and are inline with these industry changes. In the last year the leadership team has evolved and adapted. We now have a new Chairman on board – Paul Symes, and myself as the new Vice-Chair.
More recently we have also been promising a re-brand, and we are now delighted to reveal that after months of consultation with various industry professionals and student forums we are now changing our name!
We felt that although the name The British Display Society had served us well for many years, it seemed no longer relevant to our industry and the immensely varied and talented creative people that we’re here to support.
We’re delighted to announce that our new name will be the British Creative Retail Association
Over the next few months our graphics and branding will be updated and all the other legal ‘behind the scenes’ work completed, but we feel that the British Creative Retail Association will serve us well for many more years to come. Changing our name isn’t as simple (evidently) as just thinking of a good one. There has been much debate, voting and consultation around this before we eventually made our decision and there is still more work to be done.
The retail industry thrives on our creativity. We embrace it, nurture it and deliver it without fail, season after season and year after year. Our industry is always inventive, always exciting and our new name, the British Creative Retail Association sums up all of our individual talents and professional skills perfectly!
If you too would like to join us and follow our journey with these exciting changes then why not pop along and visit our website and become a member. We need support from all you industry heavyweights to continue to promote, educate and support our amazing industry. You can find us at https://britishdisplaysociety.co.uk/ and you’ll also find details of our comprehensive online course that we offer. A super flexible course which works around your schedule and written by highly skilled experts https://britishdisplaysociety.co.uk/vm-courses
Currently you can also still follow our journey on Instagram @the_british_display_society
We’ll be showing at the VM & Display show again this year so pop along to our stand on the ground floor (stand B4A) Say Hi, join up and become a member and get to view some of our amazing students work which will be on show. We hope to see you there!
