The National Funeral Exhibition 2015 has now been and gone and for Steve Soult Limited, it proved to be a great success.

Our event planning started many months before…

Deciding which coffins and caskets to take with us was our first task. We agreed to take the full Artiste range of coffins, ash boxes and the new Britannia caskets, as this would be the first time all three products would be seen together. Just like individual families, we all had our favourite Britannia casket, but which of the five would prove to be the most popular at the NFE? The split lid Britannia always gets a ‘wow’ response, especially when the choice of the interior contrasts with the colour of the casket. However, the white Britannia with gold trim and matching white interior looks so pure and simple, it always seems to turn heads. But regardless of which we took, we knew the strength of the original idea behind the Artiste range, was to give funeral directors and families the opportunity to fully personalise a coffin with engraved designs and offer the ultimate in coffin personalisation.

We decided to repeat what we did at the previous National Funeral Exhibition with our display of Artiste coffins. We created three stacks of three coffins with column like centre pieces between each one. This was a huge success at the last show, looking very impressive and allowing visitors to get up close, feel the depth of the 3D engraved letters and to compare the engraved images next to each other. As the last coffin was being lifted into place on set-up day, our Artiste display had already prompted plenty of compliments from other exhibitors. This confirmed our belief that the Steve Soult Limited Stand would once again be the brightest and busiest of the whole exhibition.

Choosing which Signature products to take was always going to be difficult. Each Signature solid wood coffin is handmade using the best natural woods, sending out one message – ‘only the best will do’. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take the entire 19-strong Signature collection, as we only had space for 9 but we selected those which best showed the breadth of the range.

Two spaces were left and these had been reserved for the debut of our Valentinos. We were confident these examples from our innovative new range would be real Showstoppers and so they proved to be!

With the hotel rooms booked and everything else coming together, the date soon came around. On the Thursday morning, a day before the Exhibition officially opened, we loaded three of our nine vans and two cars then drove in convoy to Stoneleigh, to start setting up for what would become our busiest show to date.

To those of you who came to say hello, thanks very much for your time and we hope to see you again, soon.