The dates are set. The next EuroTab-the largest pan-European, tobacco-related retail and distribution show-will take place June 24-26, 2008 at the Warsaw SKIE Centrum Expo XXI.

If you have a copy of Distribution International, you should be attending or exhibiting at EuroTab-Warsaw, because EuroTab's visitors represent the front line of the European tobacco industry. Tobacco wholesalers, importers, distributors, retailers, chain store managers, and buyers are all welcome to attend EuroTab to network, buy tobacco products and accessories, and gather information on developing trends. In 2006, EuroTab-Budapest gathered together more than 2,000 participants from over 60 nations, and Warsaw promises to be even larger!

The event is being sponsored by Lockwood Publications, the oldest tobacco-related publishing house in the world. With its lineup of Distribution International, Tobacco International, Smoke, Smokeshop, and Tobacco Asia, Lockwood Publications covers virtually every aspect of the tobacco industry.

EuroTab looks to offer the tobacco industry a pan-European distribution show, as opposed to the many ubiquitous, traditional national shows. Past EuroTabs have attracted importers, distributors, large retailers, and chain store managers from virtually every country in Eastern & Western Europe, as well as from Russia and the Former Soviet Republics, the Baltic & Balkan countries, North America, and the Near & Middle East. They came to see a vast array of tobacco-related products and accessories offered up by an impressive lineup of tobacco product distributors and manufacturers-marketers of cigarettes, cigars, snuff, chewing tobacco, loose tobacco, and pipe tobacco, and also ashtrays, lighters, roll-your-own papers, humidors, cigar cases, make-your-own products, pipes, promotional items, and much more.

EuroTab aims to aid its participants and visitors through the sometimes complicated and changing nature of tobacco distribution. Distribution systems vary dramatically from country to country, but slowly and surely tobacco distribution and availability to tobacco products are becoming more pan-European and international. And as more countries line up to join the EU, this trend can do nothing but continue.

- Emerson Leonard