Your weekly update about the Manchester Bike Show, brought to you from the team at Instantfocus Ltd. 
Big week of news this week with two signifcant updates.

Introducing our Sponsors

We are proud to announce Swinton Insurance as our headline sponsor for the Manchester Bike Show and hope that this is the start of a long and happy sponsorship arrangement. Swinton will be on stand 486 in the premium trade hall and their logo will be appearing on all our adverts and our website moving forward. As the name suggests Swinton Insurance started in this area of Manchester and they were keen to get involved in what is their “local show”.

Harley-Davidson

Our second piece of big news is that for the first time since 2012 Harley-Davidson will be represented at the show by Chester Harley. Their appearance on site 300 at this year’s Manchester Bike Show is a precursor to the company opening a new branch on the Chester Road in Manchester later in the year. So with regard to the manufacturers most of our flock are safely gathered in with the exception of BMW, but that is a different story and not one for today.

Trade Exhibitors

As I write it is the first day of the MCN Bike Show at ExCel we had a couple of trade bookings for Manchester from the floor of the show on build-up day. In total we have added 11 new trade exhibitors since last week, so in addition to Chester Harley-Davidson on site 300 we are pleased to welcome the following companies into the small business area; Discount Workwear on stand 548, Funny Heeds on stand 551, Soldiers off the Street on 553, Steve’s Tools on 593-598, Mal Dawson (The Woodman) on 584 & 585, Small World Motorcycle Tours on 583 and Atomic 56 Clothing on site 558.

It seems that bookings in the more affordable area of the show are now starting to really gather pace, so much so that we have added more stands on the floorplan to cope with the demand. In zone 2 we are pleased to welcome Zulu-Safari.com on stand 311 who needless to say organise tours in South Africa plus Debbie’s Dream House on stand 322. All the large spaces in hall 4 have now been allocated and we have just a few smaller stands still available although two fewer as from yesterday when 1 JAC Ltd booked onto stands 433 & 434.

Clubs

There is not much to report on this front since last week but this is not unusual as the more organised clubs and individual entries have already booked some 600 or so display bikes into the show and we are just waiting for the less organised ones to contact us in a panic hoping we have some space left! We will be allocating the actual club stand numbers early next week so if you are a club coordinator please keep your eyes peeled on the exhibitor list on the show website.

Advance tickets

For the first time since we started the show in 2012 advanced tickets sales are running at more than double the previous year being 105% up on five weeks from doors opening in 2016.