Marshall Yard:

I thought I did alright in undergrad Economics. I might not have been the absolute brightest, but I am at a total loss in understanding why trade show service prices are skyrocketing for 2009. Trade Show Services primarily include Installation & Dismantle (I&D) of trade show booths; and “drayage,” or material handling; on top of other things like electrical labor, cleaning, lead retrieval, and catering. Not only are rates going up, but exhibitors are being gouged on top of those rates. Let’s get my anecdotal facts out in the open, before honing in on why.

I&D is the carpentry involved in putting together the exhibit. The installers unload the crates that exhibits arrive in, and piece together the booth. These are union contractors who work in a very compressed time frame to build an exhibit from start to finish. They lay carpet, frame structures, provide the finishing touches of graphics and stretching fabric, they place furniture in denoted locations, with electrical channels built into sub flooring or carpet pads. We’ve seen I & D increase by fully 30% in the past six months. It only seems to be getting worse, amidst a real estate crash that is leaving echelons of builders and remodelers out of work.

Drayage is the act of bringing crates that are unloaded at the Marshall Yard to the correct location on the show floor. Drayage is charged at a rate that the show will determine, and you have the option to have the show contractor handle drayage, or perhaps the show contractor can do it instead. To haul 5,100 lbs. of crates with a forklift is going to cost one of my clients $6,344. Last year, their rate for drayage was $95.00 cwt, whereas the 2009 price is quoted at $124.40 cwt - a 31% increase. Since they had a slightly smaller booth in 2009, they have effectively doubled their drayage expense for the show.

Electrical, cleaning, lead retrieval, catering - perhaps exhibitors will catch a break in the ancillary services that they order? Not likely. In fact, electrical labor is starting to be a reliably done on overtime. OT pay is reliably in order in todays trade show environment. Hence, the gouge on top of the the gouge.

So how can trade show services increase in price, while every commodity that is intertwined with providing such services is in decline? Fuel costs have plummetted; unemployment is up, reducing labor costs; and capital expenditures are down, decreasing demand and prices for heavy equipment like fork lifts. In fact, the number and scale of exhibitors is drastically reduced for 2009. So at the most elementary level: DEMAND FOR TRADE SHOW SERVICES IS DOWN.

Any “theories” as to why services aren’t going to be reduced any time soon? They seem to be making up for the decrease in demand by increasing their price, contrary to basic economics. But how can they do that while any other business would go bankrupt in a matter of weeks?

Do words like “Extortion” or “Monopoly” come to mind? This trade show blog is asking.

RSNA wrapped up this week - Surely you know, since we referenced it here, here and here. The horse is dead, I know.

Siemens‘ booth, sized 110′x220′, was located in the south hall. At McCormick Place, the South Hall is the absolute least-trafficked and smallest hall. Even though we were all excited about the design, you never know how a show will go until it’s all said and done. The verdict is in!

For the first three days of the show, leads were well above 2007 numbers! Spend less, get more. I like the sound of that. They did, too. Happy clients are good clients.

Ok - Enough of this rubbish. It feels very “propogandish.” I forwarded the professional photos to a friend of mine who is in the medical field. I had gushed to her about the Siemens booth over the past few months.

Her reply:

>>WOW! that IS huge!!!
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>>
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>>p.s. That’s what she said.

This morning’s blog is not about push-up bras. I’ve had a few people email me asking me to blog about female supportive garments, but this is not the correct forum (the “Bro” or “Manzeer,” on the other hand, can be covered in future posts).

I’m actually going to talk about carpet padding.

Wait!! Don’t leave yet!!! I know that sounds like a ridiculously boring topic, but at the RSNA yesterday I experienced a first in trade show errors - WAY TOO MUCH CARPET PADDING.

I’ve never been in a home that had so much padding, much less an exhibit booth. It was to the extent that it was laborious to walk normally. I never really thought about too much pad being an issue, and I can’t pin down who would have made the error. Was it a client who insisted they wanted the super-upgrade, or was it the exhibit company that suggested they “set their booth apart” and really outdo themselves.

It was one of the biggest exhibits at RSNA, and you felt like you had 5 pound bricks tied to your shoes as you walked through their village of highly unimpressive mini-booths. Has anyone else seen this in practice elsewhere? Or am I the only one who found this so cumbersome and annoying?

This past Wednesday, I had the pleasure of driving down to McCormick Place with some of my favorite co-workers. The cast for the drive included Midnight Michigan, senior designer; Sasha Grove, manager extrordinaire; and Linda Railroad, working the oldest profession, sales. Update: I’ve finally received permission to clarify the origin of my coworkers’ names. These are porn names: Derived by the combination of our first pet’s name with the first street name that we remember living on (I will continue utilizing my McCormick Place psuedonym, since “Lucy Barton” makes for gender-confused blogging). With this crew, it’s always guaranteed to be quite a trip. The RSNA trade show was in day 3 of exhibit set-up, so let’s recap the day’s events:

When we realized that walking would have taken us over 17 hours that we decided to drive. Linda’s directions were denounced as “the long way.” Commute time: 1 hour, 15 minutes. We covered a lot of conversational ground on the way downtown: Trade show exhibit booths, obviously; how-to-drown skunks and other suburban pests; approved alternatives to watching football over the Thanksgiving holiday; and, finally, the potential drayage costs of parking on the convention center floor, versus the parking garage ($8,000 versus $15).

After arriving, we had a very stimulating time previewing the RSNA show. The Siemens rental exhibit booth is, as expected, surreal and impressive. Midnight seemed very pleased at seeing his 3-d renderings put into corporeal existance.

Other highlights from the trade show floor: One of our competitors, expected to fold within months, builds out one of their last exhibits; and our biggest “competitor” freaks out when we walk around their largest client’s booth. Name badges and company insignia can be quite intimidating, it seems. As innovators in the rental exhibit booth business, we were pleased to see them doing a mediocre job of imitating our custom rental system (ours utilizes custom built components that… well, just go to the website). They can try to imitate, but you can’t beat the real thing.

We took my way home (2 hour drive). It was a far more scenic route, and the subject matter was far less appropriate. Drowning dogs, Linda Railroad taking the “Midnight train,” and things got worse from there. H.R. will be busy sorting out who said what!

This week, the buzz around the office is all about the RSNA show (the Radialogical Society of North America’s annual meeting & expo). We have a multitude of outstanding clients at the RSNA’s. They range from Imaging on Call, who has a 20 ft. x 20 ft. custom rental booth, to the other extreme, Siemens, with a whopping 110 ft. x 220 ft. exhibit. Building a miniature “village” of different structures in a matter of a few days is fun to watch.

Word on the street (perception) is that trade shows will have fewer exhibitors in 2009, taking up less convention hall space, and with smaller exhibits, as the broader economy heads into recession. I think that’s true, by and large, but there are individual companies that are exceptions to this rule. Which side of the coin is your company on?

Tails:

Revenue is declining, profits are tighter (or in the red), and the marketing budget has a large “blip” that is “Trade Shows/Events.” In order to survive, your company decides to cut back everything, and the exposure and opportunity that a well executed trade show can offer gets thrown out with the “bathwater.” Hopefully these companies do not own their trade show exhibits - else they are wasting big marketing dollars that were invested when the economy was more favorable. In addition, there is a continuing expense of storing their exhibit property. This is a reality many companies are facing. Either scale down, or kill the program entirely.

Heads:

Your company has continued gobbling up market share, or may even be consuming competitors’ businesses via acquisition or attrition. I have a number of clients who are in this position: They are GROWING their tradeshow presence in order to undertake some major corporate agendie- Rebranding, launching new products (perhaps integrating their new acquisitions’ product line), or merely establishing their role as industry leaders. Sometimes they’re doing preventive work on potential misconceptions of who is struggling, and who is surviving, in the new economy. An effective trade show exhibit can allow a company to accomplish all of these goals in one space. A custom rental booth can be designed for each individual trade show, to ensure that the message that is conveyed is timely and precise for todays trade show audience, not last year’s.

Heads or tails, it seems like the company that rents their exhibit is better off. If you can’t afford to exhibit, you can cross off that expense for FY09. If you can afford to exhibit, you can do exactly what you want for 2009’s exhibition (e.g. - Siemens and Imaging On Call can build totally different designs for every show). It depends on what the reality is for your company, but at least you get to decide on how you’ll be perceived.

It’s September 2006. It’s hot, business is hopping and I’ve gotta get to McCormick Place  to deliver graphics and visit what we’ll call a “spicy” client. I look cute today, which makes me feel chipper…crisp, white, button-down shirt, chic black pants and high-heeled boots. I’m going to impress this client with my vast industry knowledge and top-notch customer service. I anticipate her spending a million dollars at the next trade show. It’s gonna be a good day. 

I pack my car with large boxes full of fabric graphics, paperwork and a steaming cup of coffee from 7-Eleven. An exhausting, two-hour drive from Catalyst Exhibits later, I’m swirling around the basement of Lakeside Center’s parking garage(instead of the North Hall, because traffic made me nervous so I pulled into the first Public Parking slot I could find). I’m not panicked because though it’s only my second time at this venue, I have plenty of time to navigate to the hall. I unload my boxes of graphics onto a hand truck (thanks creepy garage guy!), haul the drayage, electrical and Internet forms over my shoulder and make my way toward an exit. I soon find myself at the base of an escalator, leading to the Lakeside Center. Climbing aboard – cuteness intact – I realize that the boxes of graphics are slowly slipping from my arms and off the dolly. I try to reposition myself but the boxes are coated in Vaseline and cascade down the escalator. Hey, at least no one saw me (I think, as a bead of moisture forms above my brow) but as the thought forms, about 100 doctors pour out of a conference down the corridor. They all watch as I fumble around like a blind juggler, trying to salvage the boxes. I get to the top (humiliated, by the way, because my shirt got caught in the railing, so I look indecent), call the Account Exec for I&D and beg him to pick me up. I don’t know where I am in relation to the booth space, so it takes him 40 minutes to find me. When he does, I flop myself on the back of his cart and, sweating profusely now, drag the mangled boxes of graphics all the way to the North Hall. 

I get there, survey the area and am confident that – despite this morning’s inconveniences – the rest of the day will be swell. The booth looks lovely and the client’s no where to be found (in this case…that’s kind of a good thing). Out of nowhere, like a vulture to the carcass, the client barrels into me, screaming Spanish about missing graphics. “I have them,” I say. She storms off. Crisis averted. Sulking toward me, though, is the foreman…with eyes like someone killed his puppy. This man, who embodies lumber-jack masculinity in all it’s glory, is crying. Is he really crying? Bottom lip quivering, he mutters, “I can’t take this anymore.” 

Spicy McSpicerson has gotten to him. 

It was all down hill from the point. Mass chaos. The client screams until her nose bleeds, the foreman sobs, I’m so drenched in sweat that my hair looks like Benicio Del Toro’s, the booth “¡Es nada en absolute lo que ha supuesto ser!” and my boss (and HIS boss) are on the phone with a Spanish CFO about our pending lawsuit. 

These are trade shows in their rarest form. These are doppelgangers, of sorts…a parellel universe. Though I love the industry and – more importantly – Catalyst, I am exhausted. I wonder if Starbucks is hiring…

K/BIS - KBIS - Kitchen & Bath will hit Chicago on April 11th, 2008, have you started the water boiling for your exhibit yet? Preparation is the key and a well thought out recipe for your exhibiting success!  With over 900 exhibitors expected for the 2008 trade show, plan early and plan smart.

With a custom trade show display rentals, you can change the frosting for each trade show event.  Why stick with the plain old vanilla frosting for every trade show, when the trends say go chocolate,   custom rental exhibit displays give you the option to change and create a fresh look.

With three clients at K/BIS 2007 and over 8000 square feet of exhibit space consisting of exhibit booths of 60 x 80, 40 x 50 and 40 x 40, we are prepared to assist with a complete marketing strategy for the upcoming 2008 season.

International Home & Housewares trade show will hit McCormick Place in Chicago on March 16th-18th, 2008.  From cookware, food storage, cutlery, bath & shower and so much more this is just a paradise for home goods and housewares.  Kevin - The Mississippi Map Mascot was surprised to find that so many trade shows have such a variation of promotional items and contests going on, he just looked on in wonderment as some of the trade show attendee’s tried to hit the hole for a prize.

International Home & Housewares has had over 60,000 attendee’s with over 2,000 exhibitors in past years.  With the fact that over 15,500 buyers attend the this amazing array of housewares and the trade show floor is full of interesting and innovative new gadgets, it is a great place to network with decision makers and gather as much information from the industry experts.

Whether you are just starting out exhibiting at trade shows, or are a seasoned pro, you can re-cap some of the programs from the 2007 International Home & Housewares via a CD that is available to purchase at their website. 

For any one who has attended a trade show, the mad rush to the lunch line can be a bit of a challenge, feeling like a race horse stuck in the gate.  I have decided to share with you some of our favorite restaurants that are in and around McCormick Place  so if you decide to escape the confines of the convention center you may want to take a gander to one of these joints.  

Lets start out with Morton’s Steakhouse - starting out the shrimp that are the size of Muhammad Ali’s fist, your mouth begins to water before you even finish ordering.  You can cut the filets with a butter knife and they melt in your mouth. 

If you enjoy a bit of history, why not check out the Chicago Firehouse which dates back to 1905, and is constructed of yellow brick and limestone.  Standing in much of the same splendor, it has undergone several changes.   The stables have been turned into a courtyard, and a banquet space was added.   For those blustery winter days in the city of Chicago, try some of their delicious chicken noodle soup to warm your weary trade show bones.  Enjoy outside dining and awesome steaks, during the warm summer months in the city!

Move along down to Erie Cafe which has been rated “excellent” for several years running.  With a wide variety of entree’s to choose from, you can settle your cravings with Spaghetti & Ravioli or go for the juicy Steaks & Chops.   No matter what your choices are when you sit to dine at Erie, you can be assured the service will be over the top and your dining experience will be full service and full satisfaction.

 Gene & Georgetti’s Steak House has the reputation of a classic old-time Chicago place to dine.  Having customers that continue to dine speaks volumes and Gene & Georgetti’s has long time customers going back for 50 years.   Dive into one of their garbage salads, but rest assured that this isn’t a light meal, you will walk away full and satisfied.

More to come!

Kevin continue’s to eat, and continue’s to grow, with the addition of lettuce and spinach lately, he asked what other grub he could be munching on, which in turn got us thinking about;  The World Wide Foods 2007 Trade Show which will be held at McCormick place on October 24th-26th, 2007.   

If your company has anything to do with the Food & Dairy Industry, this is a place to be to promote your business solutions.  With over one million square feet of exhibit space, and over a thousand suppliers, the opportunity for networking is fantastic.   On hand will be the latest and greatest in processing software, supplies, and much more.  I really did not grasp all the topics that could be covered at an expo such as this,  Safety of Food Handling, Chemicals that are used in the packages, from candy bars to fast food french fry packaging and last but not least responsibilities to customer needs when deliverying products. 

There will be hours of education for anyone in the industry from plant managers to quality control professionals.  Exhibiting at Worldwide foods has proved to be a value to several of exhibitors past.   The AMI Expo and IDFA Expo will be hosted within the confines of McCormick Place as well, AMI will be focusing on Meat, Poultry & Seafood - I told Kevin there would be no turtle soup served! The IDFA is focused on the Food, Dairy & Beverage. 

With key decision makers and heavy hitters attending the expo, it is a great place to network and get your products knowledged and get a bite out of the competition.   Why not spice up your exhibit booth and draw in the attention of the prospects that are waiting for you at the Worldwide Food 2007 Trade Show. 

Kevin was digging through some old files and found this amazing.  The funky trade show display that went up at RSNA 2006 for Siemens Medical, (Kevin was watching old time tv, hence “funky” he thought he could start a trend and bring back some of the old phrases) anyhow,  he couldnt belive the transformation before the doors open at the trade show.  Siemens Medical ups leads by 32%!

Giving you a before and after - it is amazing the hours of preparation that go into the exhibit building and the process.  Not only do trade show displays need to go up at the convention center - but they also need to be built in the exhibit house to make sure everything is exactly where it is supposed to be.  Just don’t give Kevin any power tools, he may end up putting holes where they shouldnt be.

Intersting stories on: exhibit booth

Well, can you imagine, Kevin was reading about the RSNA - Radiology Society of North America Trade Show, and he just had to run off to see what in the world it was all about. 

The RSNA - Radiology Society of North America - the home office is located in Oakbrook Illinois.  The RSNA Trade Show will be held at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois and will take place on November 25th - 30th, 2008. 

Kevin has put in request to Rich here to sit down and get some interesting facts about Trade Show Display Setup at RSNA.  Rich was busy catching up this morning, so stay tuned for an update on some inside stories.

RSNA Trade Show has some information on their website for Tours & Events that will be happening in Chicago during that time of year.  Bundle up though, Chicago is known as the windy city, yet was given the name because of the long winded politicians it had in place. 

Kevin would like everyone to know about the exhibit display that is at the Shedd Aquarium - Lizards & Komodo King.  He thinks it may be worth your while to take a gander at some of these unusual animals.  I doubt their tanks get as messy though Kevin!

Fabtech International is coming November 11th - 14th to our back yard in Chicago. Being that Fabtech is going to be in Chicago, Kevin decided he was going to find out just what this welding industry was all about.  He visited McCormick place, but was more enthralled with the new Soldiers Field, news is he didn’t have a field pass, and was out there trying to kick a field goal. 

He went out on the streets, and the little fella forgot his googles, boy, you can lead a turtle to water, but you can’t make him swim! Anyhow, he went to interview some of the welders, and they did tell him safety first!  Being as loveable as a turtle can be though, they opted to talk with him. 

Fabtech has an attendance of over 25,000 and over 900 exhibitors already signed up.  The industry professionals look forward to the array of products that are displayed in varies size exhibit booths.   Kevin thought the most interesting sounding event of the entire trade show would be the Job Fair, he is currently not real sure he likes just hanging out in the sales department, because its to quiet, since Nancy has been on the trade show circuit for some time now,  Deb has behaved herself. 

Therefore he opted to go downtown, the train ride was a bit rough, but he parked his ride at the Barrington Train Station where there was a kind public works gentleman waiting to help him with the fairboxes.  He couldn’t stretch his legs far enough to insert the dollar bill.

He found himself talking with some of the professionals in the industry, metal forming, fabricating, and welders.  He most liked the metal forming, he was interested in the possiblilities of bending and shaping such material in almost any way you can think.  If he could walk on metal with more ease, he would be heading home to design a new structure for his tank for when he grows, FROM THE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF FOOD he is consuming.  Which brings him to his lunch, he suggests if you get a chance to check out some of the local restaurants downtown, one in particular, he loved was Ron of Japan’s, he sat around a large table and ate ton’s and ton’s of egg sauce. 

Kevin suggested if you can afford it to stay at the Loews Blue’s Hotel, its an electic place, and spins I Dream of Jeannie with the Morrocan theme. If you don’t have the money at least stop in the bar and visit the little room that truly reminded him of I Dream of Jeannie.