Taken from the comments in that article (no idea if it's real or not but it sounds it):
Hi all,
Thanks to those who are refusing to be drawn into the speculation game.
It's usually good journalistic practice to ask questions before posting speculation and rumour. As it happens, David's post is spot on. We will be sending out a general press release on Monday so everybody knows where we stand.The plain facts are that those who are in the know, are aware that Bowens has been due to release new products for some time.
The new management (which includes me) took the decision to put off a new product launch until the products were absolutely spot on for our target audience. They are (inevitably, as anyone seriously involved in NPD will know) running a smidge later than we would have wished and TPS is really too early for us. Now that we have a much better view of release dates for our NPD ( of which news soon) we have decided not to use valuable time, effort and money on two launches and concentrate our resources on one nearer the time. However, we DO have new products to launch into the continuous lighting/video market, so please come along to BVE next week, where you can see the new Mosaic II (Got to get a sell message in there somewhere!).
Meantime, we still have lots of work to do on our new flash products, which will be killers...
Alan Walmsley
Sales & Marketing Director, Bowens International
When it was Focus on Imaging, the organisation was chaotic and the cost of exhibiting was high.
Now that Future are running the show, the organisation has improved a lot but the costs have gone up substantially, it could be argued that the show is pricing itself out of the market.
Arguably, the only people who can now make the show pay are the people who are selling cheap products at high profit margins, and shifting old stock that otherwise would just go on Ebay.
IMO (for what it's worth) Bowens have punched far above their weight at this show for years, they must have spent a fortune on what amounts to vanity marketing, with no realistic prospect of any worthwhile return.
Those of us who are in the trade (and especially those of us with Chinese connections) know that things have been difficult for them for years, and especially since their move to China, and that they have been trying to improve their market share, overcome production problems and introduce new products by changing their management team (more than once) and, although they are our competitiors, I wish them every success with this because they are an ethical Company who, like us, are having to deal with competitiors who seem to have no business ethics whatever and who could be said to be deceiving their own customers and damaging the market. It seems to me that some very bad business decisions have been made in the past and that Bowens are now trying to get the business functioning efficiently - good luck to them for having the courage to make the right decisions!
So they've pulled out - so what? They aren't letting the show organisers down because they will have already paid the full costs to the show organisers, what they will be saving is the very high cost of staffing, including hotels, transportation, and all the add ons that make it so expensive. They aren't the first to do this, Canon are known for doing it and they are a much larger business.
I don't think that they are letting the public down either, by not running demonstrations. There are plenty of other demos running and it's impossible to see all of them. And most of the demonstrators are nothing more than "celebrity photographers" who talk the talk but can't walk the walk, they are famous for being famous and for their presentation skills, not for their photography, so no real loss there.
Bowens' new products aren't ready for launch, and they don't see the point of spending all that extra money when they have nothing new to show, and that seems to me to be a very sensible decision..