This year, BOND Events celebrates 20 years of bringing the world’s best Architects, Designers and Suppliers together to do business.
Oliver Needs, President and Owner of BOND Events speaks to Mike McCaffrey but it’s Riley who has the final word…
Driving very gingerly down the single-track, potholed lane at the foot of the Surrey Hills, deer look up from the fields, ears twitching as I trundle past. I am hoping to find the home of Oliver Needs somewhere before satnav says the road ends.
Apparently spending more time walking these woods with his dog, Riley, playing golf and strumming his guitars than he does in the business these days, I wonder how well Oliver is embracing relative retirement.
My boots splashing down on mud as I step out the car is to be expected at the place of a man with an early interest in mother earth, leading to a HND in agriculture in his late teens. Oliver did break a few tractors along the way: very much a details man, he was committed to ploughing dead-straight, whatever obstacles lay in his path...
A need for more speed then took him on Officer Training with the RAF but his algebra wasn’t quite fast enough. Thus grounded, Oliver joined the Police for 4 years, finding his place on the serious side of things with Cambridge CID. But, it was a chance visit to his sister's place in Miami Lakes at that time that gave ‘Olly’ his first taste of a very different lifestyle and that first signalled an affinity with things State-side.
Meanwhile, the whole computer thing had started to happen and Olly went into some detail here as I scribbled down ‘Amstrad 8256’, ‘databases’, ‘word processors’ (remember those?) and ‘programming’. This is when Olly found his love for tech. and a call from his brother pulled him into the world of events.
We got this reputation as the fun, creative ones who could make shows happen
“Nick was working at Blenheim, who, at the time were the fastest growing exhibition organisers in the country and he asked me to come along and see what they were doing. Well, I loved it and got involved straight away. And that’s where I met Mike Murray, my future business partner and close friend, God rest his soul. We got this reputation as the fun, creative ones who could make shows happen and it was great for a while but then United News came in and the fun went out.”
“In 1994 Nick and I teamed up with Roy McLean at McLean Publishing and found ourselves getting into the Petroleum industry, setting up directories and exhibitions and flying around Knightsbridge way too fast on scooters. Around this time, we came across Richmond Events who were putting on events on ships, where they’d get important buyers on board and sail them from Southampton to the Channel Islands. They just sold meetings packages - there were no booths in case it got a bit choppy - and the suppliers loved it ‘cos the buyers couldn’t go anywhere! Anyway, we liked the concept but the boats were well over a million quid, so we asked if we could partner with them but they didn’t go for that. And that’s when we decided we could do it ourselves."
I was in Chicago and bought myself my first Fender Stratocaster guitar
"Our first event, under McLean Events was in Penang, June 1998 and I absolutely loved it. Later that year, I was at a trade show in Chicago and went walkabout. Bought myself my first Fender Stratocaster guitar. It was a Lake Placid blue, all American Strat. Paid $568 and that night I saw Stevie Ray Vaughan’s son play live and it blew my mind. I think that’s when America started to call."
"In 2000 I met Rob Norton, now CEO at BOND, who was with Stirling at the time and we created 12 events in 18 months, many of which are still going today, including LEAF (Leading European Architects’ Forum)."
...he was the first one to say the name ‘BOND Events’ and we knew that was the one.
"March 2002, my first son was about to introduce himself to the world and I wanted to get cracking on setting up something I had proper ownership and control of. Mayfair was our stomping ground and I was walking the streets with Laurence Vizan, our travel consultant at the time and so I suggested we set up Mayfair Events. Turning onto Bond Street, Laurence and I looked at each other and he was the first one to say the name ‘BOND Events’ and we knew that was the one."
"The meetings were the first thing to get right. With everyone choosing who they most wanted to meet, we had to come up with a system that gave the fairest and most effective combination of meetings for everbody involved. There was nothing we could buy off the shelf, so I invented the ‘brick’ system of choosing meetings, which we rolled out on all McLean Events, including SIBEC and HOTEC. Other events companies have tried to copy it but we were the first to perfect the technology."
20 years on and looking back on...the mind-boggling amount of business that's been done because of it
"BOND’s first architect event, FALA (acronym?) was at the Mandarin Oriental, Macau in March 2005 and we got 40 top name architects from the biggest firms in the region. And those guys helped us get in with the American firms."
"The first Arc US was in Nov 2005 – an amazing, life-affirming experience, edifying and terrifying in equal measure – we had a lot riding on it. But we'd promised everyone a star speaker. Someone at the top. And it was Steve Andrews, formerly of Gensler who, a week before the event, said he’d be bringing RK Stewart, President Elect at the AIA at the time.
20 years on and looking back on the thousands of people that we've brought together and the mind-boggling amount of business that's been done because of it, our mission is still the same: to deliver what we promise, and that will never change."
Asking Olly about the culture at BOND, I wanted to know how truly it reflected him as a person...
"Integrity and detail matter a lot to me and that’s what you’ll find at BOND. Takes me back to something Paul Jobs (brother of Steve) said, where if you pulled a cabinet off the wall at his place, the bits revealed behind it that nobody sees will be finished just as well as the bits you do see. I remember spending 2 whole days rounding the pixels off at the corners of every web page of our first website. The detail stuff really matters to me. And honesty. To deliver what we promise."
It was then time to delve deeper into the why’s, what’s and who’s of BOND:
1. Why?
What is BOND's ultimate mission?
"We want to be the world's most effective forum for doing face-to-face business. You know, we're never going to be a trade show. We are never going to have 20,000, a hundred thousand people come through the door. You know, we're going to have a couple of hundred, our biggest show is 400, but we're going to be extremely effective. 'cause a lot of the work's done before, and those meetings all happen one after the other. So that's what we want to be the most effective way of doing face-to-face business."
Why did the world need BOND Events?
"It's a good question. BOND was created to really fill a gap between very senior architects and senior people from product suppliers - people that were supplying products to the architectural sector. And, before BOND came along, there was no way that those two senior groups of people could really meet. There were trade shows, of course, but they're a bit hit and miss, aren't they? And there were lunch and learns, but the Principals don't go. There are various other committees and whatever, but it was very difficult for a very senior person from a product manufacturing firm who might be selling right across America or across the world, to sit down with a Principal architect and have a sensible conversation about product development or whatever."
When you are actually paranoid about doing it wrong, you've probably got a better chance of delivering a great event
What drives you?
"The fear of failure, frankly. The central concept of a bond event is to deliver what we promise. And that's a very hard thing to do. But, when you are actually paranoid about doing it wrong, you've probably got a better chance of delivering a great event."
"You see, I'm a salesperson, and so I think our why is that we love creating great events. But, let me expand on that. If you're a salesperson, and I was a salesperson lucky enough to be able to create a product of my own, but if you're a salesperson, you want the product to be easy to sell. You don't want it to be hard to sell. And that really was my driving force."
"In addition to the fear of failure, my driving force was as a salesperson who wanted to make the sales easy. And, if you create an amazing event with evangelists created all over the world saying how wonderful BOND Events are, it's a lot easier to sell than something where people are saying it's rubbish."
"We are really pedantic about making sure that we deliver what we say. We're almost, I wouldn't say we're passionate about it, we're almost incensed about it. Yeah. So, we cannot bear the idea of saying that we're going to provide something and not providing it, because after all, all we sell is a promise. We're only worth our promise."
What is the best testimonial BOND has ever been given?
"The best testimonial that anyone's ever given to us is BOND takes other events and squashes them like a grape."
Who inspires you?
"Well, I'm a big fan of Jim Collins, you know, of course the author of Good to Great. And, you know, he talks about what can you be passionate about? What are you passionate about, first of all, and what can you be the best in the world at? And he talks about The Hedgehog Concept. But that's what BOND are all about. We're passionate about delivering events that give return on investment for our customers. And we can be, and are, I believe the best in the world at doing that."
How does BOND make the world a better place?
"It gets together the most important people for creating sustainable solutions to the huge effect that construction has on global warming."
2. What?
What do people get out of a BOND Event?
I'm actually talking to the horse's mouth, and I can therefore get my say and probably my client's say on how products are brought about.
"Firstly, if I'm the principal architect, I come for three reasons. I come to get great education in the seminars and of course they're all accredited, so I get my learning units."
"Number two, I get peer-to-peer networking. Where else are you going to sit down with, you know, 100, 200 other Principals from around the world doing pretty much the same job that you are doing?"
"And number three, I get to speak with very senior people from product manufacturing companies. Otherwise, I tend to be speaking with the local rep. I'm actually talking to the horse's mouth, and I can therefore get my say and probably my client's say on how products are brought about."
"Of course, on the flip side, those suppliers who come and pay to be with us and be with those architects at the event are getting a completely unprecedented opportunity. They can sit down with really senior architects from the busiest and the largest firms across America and in fact across the world. And they can sit down with them for 30 minutes. And when they've done that, they can maybe have a drink with them in the bar for 30 or more minutes and then they can have breakfast with them, or they can have lunch, or they can have dinners all organized by BOND."
"So it's a completely unmatchable opportunity that they get with those very, very senior architects."
How is a BOND event different to a trade show?
...everything is organized for you so that you can concentrate on talking to your opposites.
"Well, of course I started off as a salesman on trade shows, so I understand them pretty well. And you know, trade shows have their place, I believe they will always have their place. I've still got lots of friends in trade shows too, and we exhibit at them. So let me get that clear, first of all. But it's vastly different from a trade show. A trade show is where you are looking to meet hundreds of people of all different levels, of all different disciplines. Whereas a forum, like a BOND forum is specifically targeted to a normally very, very senior person in a given area."
"The way that the event works is also totally different. We organize your flights if you are on the architect side, we organize transfers for everybody, whether they're supplier or architects. In fact, once you get to the hotel, everything is organized for you so that you can concentrate on talking to your opposites."
What makes BOND different to its competitors?
It's the quality of the promise. It's all about the promise.
"It's the quality of the promise. It's all about the promise. We promise that we're going to deliver these people in one way or another, and if we don't deliver them, then it ain't going to work. And there are people that simply don't deliver them. Now we have some great competitors and I value them because they help progress the concept that we share. But the difference is that BOND will always deliver on its promise. And that's because we have these amazing relationships with architecture firms, and we've had them for 20 years now."
And, when asked what drives him, Olly’s reply is honesty itself: "The fear of failure, frankly, the, the central concept of a bond event is to deliver what we promise. And that's a very hard thing to do. But, when you are actually paranoid about doing it wrong, you've probably got a better chance of delivering a great event."
What is the biggest misconception people have about BOND?
"They don't understand that those architects will actually come and be there and be available to them. That's the biggest misconception."
How can attending manufacturers measure success?
...we have made millions of dollars out of BOND Events!
"The extent to which we deliver a good event is really where the rubber meets the road. And if I'm a building product manufacturer, I can measure it relatively easy by looking at what sort of business I might get in, in the long run. But there are easier ways to look at it - say, okay, out of the meetings I hoped I was going to get, how many did I get? And you'll find we are completely unbeatable in that area, and that matters to us very much."
"After a few years of doing these events, I called Chris Pond up and said, Hey Chris, could you talk to some customers and ask them, 'cause we never really asked them, do you actually get a return on investment? You know, Chris called one supplier who had done our events two or three times and said, Hey, I mean, do you actually make money out of our events? And he said, Chris, we have made millions of dollars out of BOND Events."
What is BOND’s ultimate mission?
We want to be the world's most effective forum for doing face-to-face business
"We want to be the world's most effective forum for doing face-to-face business. You know, we're never going to be a trade show. We are never going to have 20,000, a hundred thousand people come through the door. You know, we're going to have a couple of hundred, our biggest show is 400, but we're going to be extremely effective. 'cause a lot of the work's done before, and those meetings all happen one after the other. So that's what we want to be the most effective way of doing face-to-face business."
3. Being human
What do you value most about BOND?
"It sounds like it's a cliche, but it really is the people. We've got wonderful, crazy, highly motivated, lovely, passionate, bonkers people that work with BOND events. Strangely enough, a lot of the delegates at our events tend to mirror that as well. So, you know, we've had a lot of nights probably with too much booze. We've done a lot of traveling together, and it's very special to me. And none of it would be the same without the people with whom I work."
Is it true that you go to all the events?
"I do go to every single event. I have sadly missed two events, and that was because of the travel ban during COVID. We couldn't actually get into America, so we ran two events. One Arc US and one BOND Multi with our wonderful American team running it. But it was quite tough not being there."
They know their stuff - they're all experts and they love what they're doing
What are you most proud of?
"Oh, that's easy. What I'm most proud of is the consistent accolades that our customers give us around the area of organization, and that's really all about the staff. You know, they say stuff like impeccable organization, BOND staff go over and above. That's the proudest thing, and it's wonderful because it really does also set us apart from the rest. These are not temps, these are people that have worked with BOND mostly for many, many years. They know their stuff, they're all experts and they love what they're doing."
What is the best thing a client has ever said to you?
...his entire marketing plan was based on BOND events
"We've had unbelievable stories. I mean, I remember being absolutely aghast about six years ago when, at one of our events, a chap who is responsible for the growth of a major Canadian company into the US market said that his entire marketing plan was based on BOND events."
...thank you to all those wonderful Principal Architects that have supported us over the years and also the wonderful building product manufacturers
"Well, it's our 20 year anniversary, and I want to say thank you to all those wonderful Principal Architects that have supported us over the years and also the wonderful building product manufacturers, without whom none of this could have happened. Thank you so much. Carry on being with BOND, and we'll carry on not letting you down."
And it was at this point that Riley, Oliver's faithful Irish Terrier jumped onto his lap and insisted on giving me his version of events...
