AWS Joins SME, FMA
Associations to merge manufacturing, welding shows starting in 2005
By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 10/25/2004
FABTECH Intl., a Tradeshow Week 200 event for the metal forming and fabricating business, is about to get even stronger by bringing under its roof the AWS Welding Show Intl. Exposition & Annual Convention.
The tradeshow merger is the result of an agreement reached earlier this month between the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and Fabricators and Manufacturers Assn. Intl., current joint organizers of FABTECH; and the American Welding Society, organizer of the Welding Show.
"This relationship, which means adding the AWS to the SME and FMA FABTECH show, is really part of our strategic plan for the year 2010," said Nancy Berg, SME executive director and general manager. "We're building on the 25 to 30 different alliances that we've created with other non-profit organizations, publishers and commercial tradeshow organizers since the 1970s to provide more opportunities to our attendees and exhibitors."
The AWS last year commissioned an independent study on the importance of tradeshows, said the group's executive director, Ray Shook. Results of this study, combined with surveys of the Welding Show's constituents, led the association to conclude that joining forces with FABTECH was a solid plan for the future.
"We're in a day and age where you have to continue to look at different ways of doing things, if they make sense, and this is one of those things that made sense," said Shook, who has spent 30 years in the welding business, much of it on the exhibitor side of the tradeshow equation.
SME, FMA and AWS are touting the new joint show, to be called FABTECH Intl. and the AWS Welding Show, as a one-stop shop for metalworking, forming and fabricating, and welding and cutting technology. Surveys from the separate shows indicated that AWS attendees were interested in welding processes used by metalworking manufacturers, while FABTECH attendees wanted to see more welding and cutting products on the showfloor, the associations said.
The agreement takes effect in the fall of 2005, with the first combined show set for Nov. 13–16 at Chicago's McCormick Place. In the meantime, there will be one more staging of FABTECH, this week at the Intl. Exposition & Conference Center in Cleveland, and one more Welding Show, April 26–28 at the Dallas Convention Center.
SME, FMA and AWS together have created a plan for the joint show, Berg said. SME will serve as the primary show management entity, backed by an executive committee made up of the three association CEOs that will handle operations, logistics and strategic oversight. Each organization will take a segment of exhibit sales and all will work together to promote the event across the industries represented. The respective groups will continue to produce separate educational conferences, with AWS focusing on technical sessions covering welding and allied processes.
The terms of revenue sharing are being kept confidential. "This is a co-branding and co-marketing arrangement," Berg said. "The revenue sharing is something all three organizations have worked out to be mutually agreeable."
The trio expects the combined exhibition to cover 350,000 net square feet with 900 exhibiting companies. The 2003 FABTECH spanned 302,000 net sq. ft. with 673 exhibiting companies and drew 17,931 attendees (including exhibitors), while this year's Welding Show had 93,140 net sq. ft. of exhibits with 416 exhibiting companies and 6,687 attendees.
Both expos were down in square footage compared with their previous editions (FABTECH lost 84,000 net sq. ft. of exhibit space from 2002 to 2003), according to figures reported to Tradeshow Week. However, AWS said in the strategic alliance announcement that participation in its 2004 show was up 11.5 percent over last year.
Executives of the three associations involved expect the new arrangement to enhance the show experience for their members. In addition, the merger will be a boon for Chicago, where organizers say they will keep the show in odd-numbered years.
"The one thing we're certain about is that we'll always hold these shows where there's a large concentration of manufacturing buyers in a 300- to 500-mile radius," Berg said. "And for even-numbered years, we'll be looking in the Southeast and possibly on the West Coast."
From its Dearborn, Mich., headquarters, SME serves more than 500,000 manufacturing executives, managers and engineers. FMA, based in Rockford, Ill., has some 1,400 individual and company members in metal forming and fabricating. Miami, Fla.-based AWS counts 50,000 professionals in joining, brazing, soldering, cutting, thermal spray and other forms of welding.
Besides FABTECH, SME produces two other TSW 200 shows: WESTEC and EASTEC Advanced Productivity Exposition, co-sponsored by SME, the American Machine Tool Distributors' Assn. and the Assn. for Manufacturing Technology.
Berg said that, as SME works toward its goals for the year 2010, observers could expect to see more partnerships like these with FMA and AWS. "Today, global alliances are paramount to an organization's ability to reach the maximum amount of customers in the most efficient way," she noted.
