Merger Unites Hobby Shows
By Margo McCall -- Tradeshow Week, 7/12/2004
With a dab of glue and a sprinkling of glitter, the hobby and crafts industry's two largest tradeshows have been joined.
The Hobby Industry Assn. and the Assn. of Crafts & Creative Industries officially merged in June and became the Craft & Hobby Assn., setting the stage for unification of the groups' separate tradeshows.
Now falling under the new CHA brand will be the HIA Convention & Trade Show, which last year spanned more than 300,000 net square feet and ranked 67th on the Tradeshow Week 200, and The ACCI Show, which usually measures about 100,000 net sq. ft.
Owning both shows will give the new association a summer Midwest event and a winter West Coast event. The ACCI Show, a 28-year-old tradition, is held at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont in July. While the HIA show has traditionally rotated, organizers plan to let it grow roots at the Anaheim Convention Center beginning in 2007.
The 2005 winter show is scheduled for Feb. 12–15 in Atlanta, and will then move to Las Vegas in 2006. From then on, it will be located in Anaheim, except in 2010, when it will be held in Dallas.
CHA plans to grow the winter show, but the future for the summer show, which draws about 600 exhibitors and 8,000 attendees, remains undecided. "We're querying members to find out what they want from the summer show," said Donald Meyer, director of marketing and public relations. "It really is dependent on the industry and the members."
The 63-year-old HIA Convention & Trade Show in 2003 expanded to 300,500 net sq. ft., with 1,151 exhibitors and 9,960 attendees — up from 287,600 net sq. ft., 1,099 exhibitors and 8,274 attendees in 2002.
Fusing the two groups is intended to create a unified association with more clout, capable of providing education and research for members of the $29-billion crafts and hobby industry. Among the CHA's 6,000 members are hobby and crafts manufacturers, retailers and distributors.
In addition, savings will be wrung from combining some staff members. HIA staff will have oversight of the two shows, although staff from Offinger Management will continue to work on the former ACCI Show. Offinger staff who worked on ACCI association management tasks will be deployed on other projects within the Zanesville, Ohio-based firm.
Exhibitors, meanwhile, will retain the space priority arrangements they held with the individual associations prior to the merger.
The combined association will initially have 29 board members, representing the associations' separate boards. But by 2007, the board will be reduced to 15 members. HIA Executive Director Steve Berger will serve as CHA's executive director.
The crafts associations aren't the only ones to recently team up. The American Society of Assn. Executives and the Greater Washington Society of Assn. Executives approved a merger expected to result in significant cost savings. And there has been talk about the Society of Independent Show Organizers eventually teaming up with the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management.
