Credit: Matt Kidd

For a distributor carrying 21 Beretta Holding brands and a further seven from outside the group, the annual question is never whether to exhibit at the British Shooting Show. It is how much of the portfolio can reasonably be squeezed into the space available.

“We could probably take up half the hall with all the different brands that we do,” says Ali, who describes the breadth of the range as the business’s happiest problem when it comes to show planning. GMK has exhibited at the show from the beginning, and the reasoning has not shifted in the years since.

“The British Shooting Show has always been a key date,” he says. “Being in February, it kickstarts the year and gives us an amazing platform to engage with both consumers and dealers.”

That timing is doing more work than it first appears. February sits at the head of the year rather than the tail, so a product launched at the BSS has the rest of the season to build momentum, and a dealer conversation in the aisles has 11 months to convert. For a distributor whose brands span shotguns, rifles, ammunition, optics and clothing and accessories the show is the single fixed point around which the marketing calendar is arranged.

Part of what makes that fixed point work is that the British Shooting Show is two shows in one. It is unusual in serving trade and consumer under a single roof, and GMK approaches it from both directions at once, launching to dealers while also taking the temperature of the buying public.

This year gave GMK an unusually strong hand. Beretta is marking 500 years, and GMK used the show to launch its limited-edition range of guns to trade and public alike. Half the stand was given over to the anniversary, with large screens carrying the story and a baseball cap giveaway that has since become the reference point for how the team measures engagement.

“We gave away 1,500 caps at different slots throughout the three days, and they were gone within minutes, with queues around the stand,” Ali says.

The effort was noticed. The show’s exit poll of visitors voted GMK’s stand the best at the 2026 event, an accolade Ali is determined to defend rather than rest on.

GMK brings a lot of our suppliers from abroad to attend the show. “It’s great for them to speak to the end user and understand where the UK market is going compared to other markets.”

That matters for a distributor answerable to manufacturers abroad. Bringing overseas colleagues to Birmingham lets them see the UK market first hand rather than through a sales report, and the show gives them a stage. In 2026 GMK brought representation from across the Beretta Holding group, and a senior Beretta figure spoke on the main stage about the company’s heritage and where it sees the market heading.

The venue does a good deal of the persuading. “The venue is superb in terms of location and ease of access,” Ali says. “Most people across the UK can attend the show.” He is equally clear about what the visitor gets in return. “If you’re an end user, you wouldn’t go anywhere else. You’ve got everything you need for your shooting needs, whether it’s guns, rifles, accessories or clothing, and to come to one venue and see all that is absolutely incredible.”

The 2026 stand also carried an activation that drew the biggest crowd Ali can recall at the show, when Vinnie Jones, now a Beretta ambassador, gave a talk to the public and then came onto the stand to meet visitors. “I think it was probably the biggest amount of engagement from the public,” he says. “It was absolutely packed out.”

The show also earns its place internally. GMK brings its marketing and sales teams along with back-office staff, and for a business spread across brands and functions the three days at the NEC are one of the few points in the year when most of the company is together. It is, in effect, the team-building exercise a distributor of this size cannot otherwise engineer, and it feeds the energy visitors see on the stand.

The harder question is how to serve a consumer show and a trade show at the same time. GMK’s dealers attend in numbers, and Ali is frank that the balance takes managing. “It does have its challenges, trying to balance the two,” he says. “But it comes at a perfect time of year to really do that for us.”

The show’s extended trade hours for 2027 are, in his view, a sensible response. “It’s a great addition. To be able to have that more dedicated time,” he says, while acknowledging that pulling a sales team away from the public has its own cost. “You also want to engage with our dealers, which ultimately are selling to those end consumers. So it’s a great move.”

What has genuinely changed the arithmetic is the order book. GMK launched limited edition Beretta 687 and 694 models to the trade alongside a semi-automatic, and Ali says the business sold around 92% of its allocation at the show. It was, he says, probably GMK’s best ever British Shooting Show for engagement from consumers and trade alike.

“We’ve always looked at the British Shooting Show as a consumer-facing show, and that’s our main priority,” he says. “But as a business, why would you not take that opportunity to really try and get some orders off the back of it? Which ultimately helps fund the stand and the costs that do come with trade shows.”

The consequence is a redesigned stand for 2027 with meeting rooms, so dealers can be dealt with privately. There will be another limited-edition launch, with further products GMK expects to show the trade shortly. Planning is already well underway with the company’s external stand designers.

For all the planning that goes into it, the calculation underneath stays simple. February gives GMK the year’s first and best conversation with the people who buy, and in more than a decade of exhibiting the distributor has yet to find a reason not to have it.

The Great British Shooting Show returns to the NEC Birmingham on 12, 13 and 14 February 2027.

Photo credits: Visually Rich, unless individually credited.