PERSONALITY PROFILE 18 June 2002
JOHN LEYDEN – MAN WITH A HOMEMAKING MISSION
Driven by a desire to stay at
the top of the Cape’s consumer exhibition ladder, entrepreneur John Leyden
will be staging the 7th Kfm 94,5 Homemakers Expo at the Good Hope
Centre between 22nd and 25th August.
The expo’s pay off line
‘Festival of Brilliant Ideas’ typifies the success that this dynamo and his
team has made of the crowd-attracting Expo and the magazine behind it.
Leyden has come a long way from
his post-graduate days in broadcasting and publishing (he was the SATV’s first
motor sport commentator in Afrikaans) and since the early 90’s has taken the
original 16 page limited circulation Homemakers Fair freemag to its current 115
000 Cape circulation with 72 splendid pages.
Obviously, his product and the
service behind it work, as it seems that the majority of Homemakers Fair
advertisers and exhibitors have stayed loyal for years. The freemag concept to
showcase home improvement specialist companies was an idea orginatated in
Johannesburg, but Leyden has taken it to new heights in the Cape.
With under a million homes in
the Mother City and this figure growing fast, Homemakers Fair – is positioned
as the country’s leading home lifestyle freemag - and the Expo obviously fills
a need for putting home improvement and renovation companies and consumers
together.
“We clearly aim at the quality
end of the market, on the understanding that most people’s improvement of
their living space is not only a matter of necessity or value gain, but has
aspirational overtones as well,” says Leyden.
With this year’s August Expo
floor space (which had 33 000 visitors in four days last year) nearly booked
already, the company offers consumers across the board the real opportunity of
experiencing home improvement products in the round and all under one roof.
But even before this year’s
Kfm 94,5 Homemakers expo has opened its doors, John Leyden’s sights are set on
a higher goal.
“The first prize would be to
stage next year’s event as the first big consumer show in the new Cape Town
International Convention Centre on the Foreshore, and really offer something
world class and spectacular,” said Leyden.
Negotiations are well under way
to a make this a reality, so watch this space.
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