A Mandate to Grow

Chet Burchett, Reed Exhibitions North America's new president, has one overarching goal: Take the company to a new level

By Michael Hart -- Tradeshow Week, 5/3/2004

Chet Burchett, president of Reed Exhibitions North America, has been on the job less than two and a half months, so could easily be excused for answering "No comment" to many questions asked of him. Nevertheless, the new leader of the North American division of the world's largest tradeshow company clearly came to work the first day with plenty of ideas about how to move Reed into a new phase of growth. Burchett spoke with Tradeshow Week Editor in Chief Michael Hart recently about his reflections on the tradeshow industry, his plans for Reed North America and his former career as president and CEO of the U.S. division of the global public relations agency Burson-Marsteller.

Question: In your last job, you had what appears to be one of the strongest leadership positions in the American public relations business. So, why change?

Answer: I had talked to Reed about a year earlier. They came around again last fall. What I had done literally over the course of the summer, coming into the fall, was think about what I wanted to do next. There were a number of options. One of them was to go into an entirely different business, but one that was related to my background and experience.

Q: But why the tradeshow business in particular?

A: My background obviously is heavily in the B-to-B sector. It's about brand, it's about customers and relationships, it's about building a business, it's about marketing. And this is an opportunity to do that.

I also think there are a lot of dynamics in the market environment that bode well for the tradeshow and exhibitions business. There has been a change underway for a number of years that is putting an increasing emphasis on peer-to-peer communications.

Q: Not everyone is as optimistic about the future of the tradeshow industry as you seem to be. Why do you see an opportunity where others might not?

A: I'm not saying that what is past will always be. The trends are to more peer-to-peer communication. There is less confidence broadly in institutional authority, whether you're looking at a social, political, economic or a marketing level. People are putting more stock in what people tell them. There is increasing emphasis on the community, and community can be defined in a lot of ways.

In the B-to-B sector, community is often defined as people with a common interest or a common business interest or a common professional interest. Tradeshows and exhibitions, in fact, create that community – episodically, but they create it.

The opportunity going forward is to focus on how you give value to that community. How you move up a value chain becomes increasingly important as you partner with your customers on the marketing side, using as a base what your core competency is, but beginning to develop other opportunities to add value for people.

Q: Were there personal reasons for making a career change?

A: Two things. One was to be able to do something different and not relocate my family. I have a 14-year-old son who's a freshman in high school and a 10-year-old (son). I wanted to do something different but not have to move them.

I also traded a three-and-a-half-hour roundtrip commute into (New York) for a 20-minute roundtrip, if I catch all the lights (to Norwalk, Ct.).

Q: Did Mike Rusbridge (chairman of Reed Exhibitions) give you any marching orders when you went to work?

A: The mandate is growth, to grow the business. It's a simple statement. There are a lot of pieces to it, but a key piece to it is that we have a great team.

Q: And how are you going to do that?

A: There are three ways you drive growth: You grow your core business; you launch new shows, new activities into the market; and you acquire. We will have a strategy that works against all three of those factors of growth.

Q: What will the launch portion entail?

A: We are launching shows; we have launched shows. One of the things that perhaps people don't see is that Reed Exhibitions North America in the last 18 months has launched 16 shows or regional clones of events or extensions of things we were already doing.

Sixteen things in 18 months is a pretty good clip, and we have more in the pipeline. Some more things will happen this year, and we have more things planned for next year.

Q: What sectors do you expect to launch shows in?

A: I'm not going to get into specifics in this conversation, but I think you can expect us to be aggressive in the market.

Q: And what about the acquisition strategy, given that M&A activity has already picked up considerably since the beginning of the year?

A: You can say that about this business, but you can say that about a great many businesses. The marketplace is turning. As it does, people become more active. Certainly what I've seen and what I've heard since I've been here is that there has been an uptick in the market.

A lot of that is driven by a sense of optimism for what the future holds. It's been a long few years, not just for the tradeshow business but for a pretty broad spectrum of businesses. As that begins to change, I think you will see a different pace.

What we do, we will do based on what we believe is strategically correct for the future. That's really where I'm focused right now.

Q: Where do you see opportunities for organic growth?

A: You obviously look to your core portfolio for growth and where you can drive it. You can look at things like hardware. The show (the Natl. Hardware Show) has yet to occur obviously, but we've already announced expansion of the venue for next year. It's the first time in a number of years that we've seen this kind of excitement around a show. That's certainly one thing that is in evidence.

With a lot of shows, what we have seen happen this year is what I'll call stabilization. Attendance is up, exhibitor enthusiasm about '05 shows is up. In a number of cases, we've seen space draws for shows, on a percentage basis, significantly higher than what we saw last year, looking toward 2005.

Q: Since you brought up the hardware show, how do you expect the dispute between Reed and the American Hardware Assn. to be resolved?

A: I'm not going to comment on litigation other than to say we believe broadly it's without merit. We're just going to go forward and do what we think is right for the industry and for the market.

We're going to do the Natl. Hardware Show in Las Vegas in May and we're very pleased with what we've seen. I'm gratified that the market, in terms of voting with its wallet and with its feet, indicates that what we think is the direction for the show in the future is a good one.

I spend little time thinking about what our competitors are doing. It's important to focus on what you can do, where you can add value for your customers, be they exhibitors or attendees.

Q: During the last few years, many in this industry have explored so-called alternatives to the traditional show (i.e., corporate events, virtual tradeshows) to generate revenue. What role will these kinds of events play in Reed North America's future?

A: If the focus is a revenue stream, then you miss the boat. If the focus is on where you deliver value, then you're in the right ballpark.

You have to be careful when you make assumptions about the traditional model. You look at Reed Exhibitions as we really are, which is a global firm, and you find lots of different models. What you find is that we are an organization that is focused on finding the right value proposition for our customers, being able to deliver value within that context and doing it in a way that's good not only for our partners and our customers, but good for our business.

I've spent quite a bit of time going through and looking at our system and what I find is we have a broad array of approaches to the marketplace, depending on what's appropriate for that sector. I would caution anybody who makes an assumption about Reed Exhibitions relative to a specific model. It is increasingly agile in meeting the emerging needs.

Q: Some have found it intriguing that the individual chosen to head up one of the largest companies in an industry as entrepreneur-driven as this one is would come from the public relations field. How would you respond to those comments?

A: I love building new businesses, building new ideas. I have a lot to learn about the tradeshow business, but I have in the past built businesses, built disciplines, that didn't really exist prior to that.

Years ago, I went to Chicago with a public relations agency and was asked to cover a small market. I had a staff of four or five people, a very traditional B-to-B assignment and about $600,000 of business. Four and a half years later we had $6.5 million, on its way to $7 million. We had established a new methodology for a corporate brand in its marketplace and I was running a global practice. Now, I think of that as entrepreneurial. To be an entrepreneur is to love doing new things. It's not consigned to one industry or one business.

Q: What's the future tradeshow business going to look like?

A: It would be the height of conceit for me to speculate. However, what I will say is it will be different in five years than it is today. Defining that change, defining and participating as a member of the leading edge of that change, is what gets you out of bed in the morning and puts your feet on the floor with a sense of excitement.