Traffic Control: Many Come, Few Leave

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 5/16/2005

Lots of things contribute to a city's success as a tradeshow destination: the players, the facilities, the labor force. But nothing defines a place's exposition personality, or takes its business temperature, like its resident exhibitions.

Looking at the flow of tradeshows in and out of Las Vegas — those that made it home, and those that couldn't make it there — reveals a story that echoes that of the city itself.

Its popularity as an exhibition destination has had peaks and valleys, but has gathered steam steadily over the last decade. And like the celebrities associated with Sin City, tradeshows have seen a couple spectacular flame-outs.

Las Vegas has proven to be fertile ground for launches, spin-offs and joint ventures.

Before there was CONEXPO-CON/AGG — the Assn. of Equipment Manufacturers' triennial construction, aggregates and ready-mixed concrete gathering that topped the Tradeshow Week 200 with its 2002 show — there was CONEXPO ... and CON/AGG as two distinct and separate entities.

The former started in 1909 as a traveling road show. That is, "It was on the road, and it was about road equipment," said Dennis Slater, president of AEM, the show's current owner and manager. Fueled by the era's road improvement projects, the 4,000 square foot event rotated around the Midwest. Similarly, CON/AGG started about a decade later to showcase the newest equipment being developed for the aggregates industry.

During the 1980s, the two shows took place separately in Las Vegas — CON/AGG for the first time in 1986, and CONEXPO the next year.

The associations that owned the shows (which have since merged and changed names) in 1994 formed a joint venture and announced that the new combined show would launch at the Las Vegas Convention Center in 1996.

Why Las Vegas? Because, Slater said, "it brings together all the elements needed for a successful CONEXPO-CON/AGG: warm weather for the outdoor exhibits, a huge amount of hotel rooms, a large convention center and the destination that our attendees want to come to."

Around the time AEM's predecessors were deciding to unveil their mega-merger in the Southwest, the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute was deciding to launch a western version of its 40-year-old PACK EXPO Intl., based in Chicago. The Vegas version, at the LVCC in odd-numbered years, would alternate with the Midwestern version at McCormick Place in even-numbered years — both biennial events.

Although it hasn't quite caught up with its big brother, which was No. 2 on this year's TSW 200, PACK EXPO Las Vegas did come in at No. 34 on last year's listing.

Even before CONEXPO-CON/AGG and PACK EXPO, Vegas demonstrated its ability to perform well for unestablished brands with Reed Exhibitions' 1995 launch of The JCK Show ~ Las Vegas. The annual high-end jewelry show at Sands Expo & Convention Center has risen steadily through the ranks of the TSW 200 since then, placing 28th this year.

In the last decade, so many tradeshows have given Las Vegas a try, or added it to their permanent rotations, that keeping track of those that move there permanently can be challenging.

One obvious case leaps to mind: Intl. CES, the United States' largest annual conference and exhibition for four years running. The show, launched in New York in 1967, first dipped its big toe in the Nevada sand in 1978, after seven years in Chicago.

From then until 1994, the Consumer Electronics Assn. alternated its semiannual summer and winter events between Chicago and Las Vegas, respectively.

Gradually, the winter event overtook its progenitor. The 1994 Chicago show drew only 634 exhibitors compared to the Las Vegas show's 1,857. The following year marked the beginning of what would become Intl. CES.

CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro recalled the decision of his former boss and the show's founder, Jack Wayman, to move the show to Las Vegas. "We were the first major show to move. It was in Chicago in January, and one year it was so cold nobody left their hotel rooms. We went to Las Vegas, and it was very controversial, because no major business event was there. But it was a success, and we haven't looked back since then."

Peter MacGillivray, vice president of marketing and communications for the Specialty Equipment Market Assn., tells a similar story about SEMA Show.

The show was launched in 1965, and it took place for the first time in Las Vegas in 1977. MacGillivray said then-SEMA President Leo Kagan, a former Disneyland Hotel executive, thought Las Vegas would make a better national venue for the show than Anaheim.

"It was a little bit controversial at the time, but of course, now he's regarded as a hero and a visionary, because he was one of the first people to move a show to Vegas because of its national appeal. (The show) hasn't stopped growing since we made that move," MacGillivray said.

SEMA Show, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, entered the top 10 in last year's TSW 200, and this year placed fourth. Along the way, the association has participated in the creation of Automotive Aftermarket Industry Week with the Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo (AAPEX).

More recent history provides similar examples. The Promotional Products Assn. Intl. decided to move its PPAI Expo from its home base in Dallas to Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino starting in 2003.

Darel Cook, PPAI director of expositions and meetings, said there were three reasons for the change. Attendees were spread between 26 hotels in Dallas, while in Las Vegas they could fit into three. The Mandalay Bay Convention Center represented a "significant facility upgrade." And finally, a change of atmosphere was needed to reinvigorate the show.

The move has paid off. "From our last show in Dallas to this year, our attendance has grown 50 percent," Cook said, adding that it was due to expanding admission criteria along with the new location. "From an exhibit standpoint, we've grown by almost 100 booths a year."

Of course, not every show falls in love with the city of drive-through weddings.

The Sporting Goods Manufacturers' Assn.'s Super Show looked to some like it would make Las Vegas its home when it moved from Atlanta's Georgia World Congress Center to the Sands Expo & Convention Center in 2001. But after three years of seesawing from No. 7 to No. 20 to No. 9 on the TSW 200, the show last year moved to Orlando's Orange County Convention Center, where it is booked through 2006.

VNU Expositions' Doug Hope said, "It's a fatal error to believe that your tradeshow can be in one city forever. One has to think about market and audience."

Hope is group director of GlobalShop, which moved from Chicago to Las Vegas in 2004 — for good, some thought. In reality, the show will rotate between Las Vegas, Orlando and, possibly, Chicago.

"We're still getting our feet wet in Las Vegas," he noted. "The retail industry our show serves is very much about being able to see examples of retail in the destination city. So, because retail development has been strong in Vegas, that's proved to be a wise move."

Then there are those who leave Las Vegas forever.

Epic Enterprises owned and operated SILK (the Intl. Silk Flower & Decorative Accessories Exposition) from 1990 to 1996, when company head Chuck Schwartz (now chairman of ConvExx) sold Epic — and SILK along with it — to PGI Exhibitions.

The LVCC show hovered above the 100 mark of the TSW 200 until two years later, when PGI sold it to the Dallas Market Center, where it has been ever since. The show has been absorbed into the DMC's June market and has become the Holiday & Home Expo. It is no longer ranked on the TSW 200.

The Intl. Trucking Show looks like it's headed for a similar fate. Since it peaked at No. 99 on the 1998 TSW 200, the show has seen a steady decline, dropping as low as No. 160 in 2002. After eight years and a couple venue changes in Las Vegas, the California Trucking Assn. last year moved the show back to its original site in Anaheim and timeframe in the fall.

Longtime manager, Intl. Trade Show Management, didn't agree with the move and decided to stay in Las Vegas in the spring with its own new event at the LVCC, dubbed the Truck Show Las Vegas.

Both shows are scheduled — same time, same place — again this year, but neither is likely to break into the top 200. The Truck Show filled 100,300 net sq. ft. and drew 17,012 professional attendees.

But the most interesting disappearing acts aren't those that went somewhere else.

Before COMDEX, there was the Natl. Computer Conference, which reached its apex at No. 16 on the 1984 TSW 200. Begun by the American Federation of Information Processing Societies in 1973, the NCC (originally called the Joint Computer Conferences) took place in New York and Dallas before moving to Las Vegas in 1971.

Sam Lippman, then-director of operations for AFIPS, said, "It was the first major show in Las Vegas in the middle of the summer. We had it in July. I did a lot of work with swamp coolers."

In the end, according to Lippman, it wasn't the heat that killed the NCC. It was AFIPS — and Sheldon Adelson.

"The show was owned and operated by 11 different societies," he explained. "It started to gain momentum as a cash cow, and they spent most of their time trying to anticipate the surplus .... There was no investment into the show, no understanding of face-to-face marketing. It was a gift that was given to them, and they squandered it."

The last NCC took place in 1987, when Adelson was developing a computer show of his own. Lippman said AFIPS didn't think the personal computer revolution would amount to anything, but Adelson believed it would.

Adelson's COMDEX would go on to reach the No. 1 position on the TSW 200 in 1999. However, just six years later, the show — now under different ownership — appears to be gone. After falling to No. 180 in 2003, it was postponed in 2004 and 2005.

Based on his conversations with former and current managers of the show, Lippman believes COMDEX suffered from a combination of circumstances. First, the numerous times the show was sold left each successive owner with an increasingly larger amount of debt. Second, it suffered the fate of many other broad, horizontal shows: Splinter vertical events carried off large chunks of it. Third, happenings in the technology sector, like the Y2K scare and the bursting of the dot-com bubble, paralyzed the industry.

But the most important lesson for show managers was in how to treat customers. "If your customers hate you, because they feel you've been overcharging them, they'll jump ship as soon as they get the chance," said Lippman.