Fate of NMW—and Trade Shows in General

What is to become of National Manufacturing Week? At one time, it was the must-attend show for anyone doing mechanical design and the must-exhibit show for all MCAD vendors. Now it’s up for sale.

There was a time when trade shows were gold mines. During my days with Miller Freeman and CADENCE, I heard a successful trade show could rake in 80% of its revenue as profit. Trade shows like NDES and AEC/Systems were the plums of publishing companies, raking in big bucks when their magazines (called “books”) often operated marginally in very competitive environments. In fact, it was a widely held belief that trade magazine suffered the second highest mortality rate of all enterprises. The highest mortality rate was restaurants but that was before the dot com bust.

Attendance at industry trade shows has gone down over the years. Why? Here are some possible reasons:

1. 9/11. After 9/11, travel in general suffered, and business travel to national trade shows suffered along with it.
2. The Internet. Even after people, started to feel safe about getting on a plane, they realized that they had been able to get all the information they needed about products and services through the web. These days what executive will send his CAD manager to a trade show to research MCAD systems, at a cost of thousands of dollars, when all that information can be found on the companies’ websites So the vultures are circling over Rosemont’s conventions center. One industry observer has been quoted as Rosemont is where shows go to die. But I don’t think so. They will need to reinvent themselves, however.

If They Made Me King…

Here’s what I would do.

1. Concentrate on a number of regional shows, rather than one big national show. It’s easy to for a manager to send a staffer out for a day to a local show. No hotel. No flight. You may have to pick up their parking and admission fee (which is usually nothing if all they want is to see the exhibits). Also, getting out of the office for a day would be a great perk.
2. Concentrate on hardware. Engineers love to pickup and handle hardware. You can’t duplicate that on the computer, like you can with software.
3. Perk up the conference schedule. “Classes” that are just sales pitches by vendors don’t hold any credibility. Take a clue from user conferences, such as Autodesk University and SolidWorks World. These have actually GROWN in attendance. Why? Users are guaranteed to be more useful to their companies because classes are packed with useful tutorials, tips, etc.

Comments

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[David Opsahl]

Interesting thread. Some comments:

1. I don't think 9/11 has been a factor on trade show attendance for some time; one only has to remember NCGA and AutoFACT - to name two - to have seen this is a trend that has been evolving for a long time.

2. Its absolutely true that the Internet has everything to do with the decline in attendance at trade shows, as it has changed the selling and marketing strategies for software companies. Customers and prospects used to take time to see vendor presentations, either in the office or at a tradeshow, because there really was no other way to get the information you needed. Ask any software company how hard it is to get a customer meeting today vs. ten years ago. I call this David's Law: the attendance at trade shows, conferences, and vendor presentations is inversely proportional to the amount of information about the subject available on the Internet.

3. Attendance at conferences or trade shows based on the appeal of the location attracts people who aren't serious about getting benefit from their attendance; its too easy to cash in frequent flyer miles and hotel points if you want some time by the pool at your favorite palm-tree location

4. Yes, you can still have a conference or trade show that gets attendance, but you have two opposing forces at work. One is that vendors underwrite the cost of most of the conferences and shows with booth fees and sponsorship. For that, they expect to be able to get in front of their target audience. The opposing view is that attendees come to learn something they can't get anywhere else.

How to resolve this? Here's just one idea.

Vendors, instead of paying for a booth that nobody of importance walks through, should sponsor a speaker that has something interesting and valuable to contribute. It could be a customer, consultant or an industry luminary and represent the vision the sponsor has without gratuiously promoting the vendors product.

We all know that keynotes are the most attended sessions at a conference or tradeshow - why limit them to one a day?

[Wolfgang Geist]

Same effects in Europe with Trade Shows with even more severe effects. There is no real European show. Countries stay islands and cost for promotion is even higher due to different languagues. There is only one show which has some success: EuroMold in Frankfurt. It less a product show but more a design process show.
Shows have lost their main former mission: collection of new information. The only reason for me attending a show is to meet the right people. This cannot be replaced by Internet even though there are chat rooms. In my view vendors should create more direct meeting opportunities with key staff and less focus on product presentations.

[Jay Moore]

Great observations and comments. I would say much if not all of this also applies to the AEC industry. As an exhibitor we have noticed, not a slight, but a HUGE decrease in qualified tradeshow attendees and numbers. To combat decreasing attendance, shows are increasing their exhibitor costs / fees to help make up for this negative shift.

In addition, many are also not providing enough pre-show marketing & advertising to bring in the numbers. This is also a result of skyrocketing print and web advertising prices. And for the exhibitor I haven't even touched on the massive dollars for booth designs, shipping, setup, etc.

Regional shows lack the funds (or desire) to advertise enough. National shows get large exhibitor attendance but attendees can rarely justify travel costs, etc. that you mentioned.

Regional or National, it is a vicious cycle that I don't see a solution to for the show planners anywhere in the near future.

Thanks
Jay

[Adena Schutzberg]

You are right about having "hardware" that's not accessible via the 'Net. The big excitement at the past two ESRI conferences were the "touch table" a large format, touch screen monitor in a huge table and the "topo table", a table that used pins to create 3D topography from existing models in front of your eyes. Folks stood in the Northrop Grumman booth for a long time watching and drooling over these.

[ralphg]

I'm not sure that regional shows would work better. Coupla' reasons:

1. Smaller target area, fewer potential visitors.

2. No commitment is needed. I find I never go to local (Vancouver BC) shows, because I don't need to pre-commit. Comes the day of the show, and, well, I got other things to do.

Far-off shows require pre-committment in terms of airfares, et al.

Another draw for me is when the show is located in an interesting city. Vancouver is great, but I can go at any time (just an hour away).