Over 1200 people turned up to The Abbotsford Convention Centre for the Melbourne Guitar Makers Festival over the weekend of the 22 and 23rd May. 

Stu Forbes owner of Port Douglas based hand made guitar makers Cloud Nine Guitars reported that, although he thought he had gone well prepared with over 500 business cards, he ran out well before the end of the last day. 

"It was busy right through to the final hour, there was no way any of the exhibitors could have packed up early, as I've seen a some other exhibitions on the last day"  he said. 

Stu confirmed he is confident that he will have generated a lot of business from this, his first exhibition.  According to the more experienced exhibitors most visitors come to the Convention centre ,to check everything out so they know how many pennies they need to save to make their dream of owning a hand made guitar a reality. 

Apparently immediately after the exhibition Stu's website went mental with people browsing for even more information (which is awesome).  "I'm hoping that maybe at least 10% of the people I spoke to will want to purchase a guitar, which doesn't sound a lot but that would be 120 people and that's a lot of guitars".

In his typically calm style, Stu turned to his offsider Billy and laughed "That'll keep us busy for a while".

Click below to view the exhibition on Youtube