While globalisation sees the world become smaller, the opportunities we have to learn from different countries and embrace new celebrations only continue to grow. As the party industry continues to become more multi-cultural and inclusive, we decided to take a virtual trip to find out more about a number of key territories and their local customs. Part one in our round-the-world journey sees us drop in on the USA, Italy, Holland, Poland and Spain to find out more.
In Holland there are a multitude of of official and traditional holidays that the Dutch enjoy celebrating, with standout occasions including Easter and King’s Day. In addition to these of official national holidays, a number of festivals and other celebrations will also take place throughout the year, which are celebrated with a passion! Boland Party’s general manager Jan-Willem Tuitel and OppoSuits’ head of sales Robin Breeman take us on a whistle-stop tour of the current party market.
Jan: “The major annual party seasons include King’s Day (27 April), when we all dress in orange, have orange decorations everywhere and enjoy lots of free markets and parties. Liberation Day is on 5 May and there are music festivals in many cities on that day. Of course, Sinterklaas (St Nicolas!) is on 5 December and is also a big celebration.
There are lots of local differences across Holland, so we have a number of different ways of celebrating our traditional parties. A big one is the way we celebrate our 50th birthday: for men they are then called Abraham, while women become Sarah! Another really quirky one is that couples celebrate 12 1⁄2 years as an anniversary! All these celebrations will continue to be cancelled or very limited over the next 12 months because of COVID. The reality is we do not know what will happen and we can only take it day-by-day and follow all the government guidelines
The Dutch party market has been very badly affected by the pandemic. We all try to survive, with support of the government, but will not really know the full effect on retailers until it is all over.
We launched our 2021 new items catalogue in January, it has about 400 new products. Our Halloween catalogue will launch this month and we will launching our complete new catalogue for 2021/2022 at the beginning of September. In spring we are expecting to open our brand new 500,000 sq.ft head office, distribution centre and design studios, so we do have plenty to look forward to!”
Robin: “The major celebrations here are of course Carnival, King’s Day, Pride, Halloween (although it is not as big as it is in the UK), Christmas, hopefully the Euros and some smaller events such as St. Patrick’s Day. Typical Dutch parties always involve lots of drinking but I don’t think this is unique to Holland! Dressing up in orange is something we’re very well-known for.
I think everybody is pretty bummed-out that carnival won’t be taking place this year, as for a lot of people carnival is the highlight of the year. It’s always a great party and really ‘gezellig’ as the Dutch like to say; you can go up to everybody and have a chat. Everybody is very friendly and in high spirits, so it is a real shame that it won’t be taking place in 2021.
I do think the Euros could potentially still happen, although maybe without fans. King’s Day is in April and with our latest advice that we cannot hold events until 5 May 2020 this is also a lost opportunity – but it’ll still be there in the future. We have some exciting new licences coming up soon though, so it’s not all bad news!”
