Going It Alone: Finders of Unmined Opportunity
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 3/26/2007
At last November's Tradeshow Week Fastest 50 celebration, Hanley Wood's Galen Poss said of the tradeshow industry, "We change lives because of the commerce we create."
With Poss' words still ringing in their ears, the editors of Tradeshow Week began to wonder how many hundreds of thousands of businesses have started out as nothing but an entrepreneur's idea and a 10Œx10Œ pipe-and-drape booth at a tradeshow?
And how many of those tradeshows began as a gleam in the eye of an entrepreneur who thought he or she saw an unmined opportunity? On the eve of the annual Society of Independent Show Organizers CEO Summit, this special issue of TSW examines the role of the independent entrepreneur in the tradeshow industry.
The editors take a look at some of the opportunities and challenges exclusive to the most independent of the industry's for-profit organizers, and some of their quite unique stories — often in their own words.
