BDIA Dental Showcase In Birmingham

Editor's Note: At Happythreads, we provide an opportunity for French stagiaires (interns) to spend some time with us learning about ecommerce and digital marketing in an English-speaking company. Recently, our newest intern, Clémentine, experienced her very first trade show after only two weeks with Happythreads. Read her report below - but we can assure you, she did very well and absolutely does not have the memory skills of a carrot (we think this might be a French thing, but it might just be a Clémentine thing!) - and we’re pretty sure she knows what moisture-wicking means by now!

BDIA: Dental Showcase in Birmingham

Last week, the BDIA Dental Showcase, the UK’s biggest dental showcase, took place in Birmingham. Thousands of professionals, dentists, surgeons, prosthetists and nurses came to discover the latest innovations and, of course, our (beautiful) dental scrubs; with a selection of endless exhibitors stands.

This tradeshow is one of the major exhibitions in the dental sector and took place from 17 to 19 of October: 3 days of organization, tiredness, sharing and meetings.

First Experience

Freshly arrived at Happythreads, these events were new to me. I only had two weeks to familiarize myself with the products, learn English-specific jargon and sale arguments such as wrinkle-resistant or moisture-wicking. MOISTURE-WICKING?! Oh don’t worry, I still don’t know what it means and even how to pronounce it. Times are complicated for people having memory skills of a carrot.

Stop joking now, I had pressure without even knowing what to expect. As a French Southerner, talking about everything and anything to someone that I don’t know is part of my habits. In France, we used to say “avoir la tchatch”, I have it for sure... BUT NOT IN ENGLISH! 

From there, self-confidence and brain just left my body, leaving me alone with this feeling of stupidity when I couldn’t understand a very simple question. Nevertheless, I had developed a solution to avoid disasters. I tried to send (discreet?) distress signals to my colleagues through call-for-help looks when a customer asked me more information that I had learned two days ago.

Lucky me, dentists and nurses knew why they were here. I didn’t need to convince them with these long and unpronounceable words: they asked for what they needed, I helped them, and everyone was happy. Once they heard my French accent, it relaxed the atmosphere and allowed me to justify my apology when I didn’t understand some requests. We shouldn’t be afraid of our accent, people love accents; not only the french accent but every accent, it’s part of us, let’s be proud of it!

Here We Go Again

By the way, if you want to hear this awesome french accent (huh? Me, exaggerating? never!) come to meet us at the ADF show in Paris from the 26th of November. We will be happy to help you and this time, I’ll have all the ins and outs about our dental scrubs, I promise!

About the ADF show: ADF is an exhibition related to dentistry. Exchanges, conferences, demonstrations of new equipment and presentations of new technologies will be part of the show. It will finally be the same type of event as the one in Birmingham but this one takes place in the most famous city in France, Paris.