The Show Man

Ed Meek, CEO of Oxford Publishing, started out as a marketing professor at the University of Mississippi and part-time lobbyist in Jackson, the Mississippi state capital, and Washington, D.C.

"But I've always been an entrepreneur," he added.

In fact, on the long drives between Jackson and his home in Oxford, he racked his brain to come up with ideas to fill communication needs. That led to magazines (eight of them over the years), tradeshows, the Tupelo Furniture Market and now The Show.

Since 1983, Meek and his Oxford Publications have held the annual Nightclub & Bar/Beverage Retailer/Beverage & Food Convention & Trade Show in Las Vegas. On its own last year, it ranked No. 99 on the 2007 TSW 200.

This year he launched Hospitality Expo, bought the Las Vegas Intl. Restaurant Show and talked two Arizona hospitality groups into collocating their Arizona Hospitality Expo with Nightclub & Bar.

And, he insists, he's still not done. Before the 2008 event, more shows likely will be launched, more acquisitions made and more partnerships formed with state associations and other tradeshow organizers ¡ª in an attempt to create an all-encompassing hospitality event for the Western United States.

Meek spoke with TSW Editor in Chief Michael Hart about the evolution of The Show and his vision for its future.

Question: How did you start in the tradeshow business?

Answer: A while ago, I learned that Mississippi was the largest producer of low-end furniture in the nation. I wondered if there could be an event to support that.

There were 261 plants within 90 miles of Tupelo (Miss.), which is an hour from me. They were mostly small operations that would go to High Point, N.C., spending an average of $150,000 to $300,000 twice a year marketing their products.

I went to a bunch of them, riding all the roads in the hills of North Mississippi. I convinced these guys to do a little tradeshow in Mississippi.

We did that, and it ultimately grew into a facility that's about 2.5 million square feet that is today called the Tupelo Furniture Market.

Q: You didn't know much about tradeshows then. What made you think you could be successful?

A: I thought we could cut the cost. The average High Point rate was about $32 per square foot. In Mississippi, would you believe, (it was) $3. We made a ton of money selling space at $3 and $4 a square foot.

Q: At that rate, how did you make any money?

A: We brought an average of 40,000 buyers to Tupelo, and we rented every bed from Memphis down to the northern part of Mississippi ¡ª and still do. For buyers to come to Mississippi, instead of Mississippi manufacturers going to High Point or Atlanta, that was a great thing.

I sold out of that six or eight years later, but I got me a taste of the tradeshow business.

Q: How did the idea for the Nightclub & Bar show come about?

A: Well, in the meantime, I had this little magazine called Nightclub & Bar. A student of mine had started it and couldn't make a go of it. She asked me to buy it and keep her employed for a year until she got married. I did, she moved on and I had this little magazine.

I saw there wasn't a tradeshow. I looked around and said, "That looks like a nice little niche I ought to invest some more time and energy in."

Q: So, on top of everything else, you learned a lot about the bar business?

A: I knew nothing, and still know nothing, about the bar business. I know how to bend my elbow and drink a beer, but that's it.

We got ourselves a board that guides our development and takes seriously their ownership in what we do. There's almost nothing we have done that they did not collectively come up with.

Q: Like what?

A: They sat me down and said, "Ed, there's a trend that you need to latch on to. We see the merging of food and beverage. Beverage is going to drive food more than food driving beverage, and I think we should move in that direction. In fact, we think you should start a magazine."

So, sure enough, I started a magazine, Restaurant Marketing, and they all supported it for about 10 years.

Q: You don't still have that magazine, do you?

A: After 10 years, all of a sudden, advertising dropped off. I gathered them all back again and said, "Why aren't you advertising?"

They said, "Well, our research said the people we want to reach are reading Nightclub & Bar, believe it or not, so the magazine's not needed."

So we shut that down. That was the one decision they made that really cost me a lot of money.

Q: And all this led to the Nightclub & Bar show how?

A: Our goal had always been to create an all-encompassing hospitality event, housed in Las Vegas. We all agreed that Las Vegas was the hub, and the direction was to have an encompassing event that brings in food and beverage.

(Because of the magazine) my board forced me to exhibit at the Natl. Restaurant Assn. (Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show). We had a 20¡ä¡Á20¡ä. I did that two or three years, but I never saw a customer, a reader, the whole time.

So I spent my time going around the hall seeing these huge, beautiful booths for the beverage component. I went to every one of them and tried to get them to talk to me. Not a one of them would give me the time of day.

Finally, I ran into a guy with Hiram Walker (whiskey), named Jim Flaherty. I went up to him and asked him my usual question. I said, "Mr. Flaherty, are you making any money at this show?" He said, "Hell, no."

I said, "Why don't you come with me, and let's try to build a show that you and I can make some money off of with our segment?" He said, "Let's do it."

Q: What segment did you mean?

A: Beverage. See, in those days, in the mid-'80s, the NRA had all the beverage component and all the food. Everything we have today was then part of NRA.

Q: How did things work out?

A: Hiram Walker came in, and that brought in Jim Beam. That brought in Bacardi, and all the beverage moved from NRA to Las Vegas. That's what gave birth to The Show.

Q: The Show, in upper case letters?

A: We began to develop a concept called the Food and Beverage Show. We could never decide if it was going to be the Nightclub Show or the Food and Beverage Show because we felt nightclub was offensive in the restaurant segment.

Finally one of us said, "Hell, just call it The Show." We found a way to trademark it and that's what we've done.

Q: Nobody before had ever trademarked the term The Show?

A: No.

Q: How did you get the Arizona associations to leave their own state and join you in Las Vegas?

A: All across the country, state restaurant shows are not very successful and, frankly, are in decline. We learned that through our friends in Las Vegas, and they opened the door for us with Arizona.

Q: What else do you have planned along those lines?

A: We're having active discussions with six other states about the hotel and restaurant associations coming in with us. We're not going to get all of them, but we're inviting all 11 Western states to be a part of this, to use The Show as a vehicle to grow their membership and support their membership.

Q: You say you want an all-encompassing hospitality show in Las Vegas. That sounds an awful lot like what the NRA has in Chicago.

A: We don't want to compete with the NRA. Some people try to cast us as competitors. We're competitors to the extent that we're another show, but we're trying to do our thing and say this part of the country deserves a major hotel-restaurant show and where better to have that than in Las Vegas, with the greatest hotels in the world and the greatest chefs in the world?

Q: Have you told the NRA that?

A: We've invited the NRA and others to come in and use this platform as a means to serve the public in this area. We've extended that invitation to Mary Pat (Heftman, NRA senior vice president), and she has been very gracious and positive. We've not met. She's been tied up in her own show, but we are going to get together and talk about some ideas.

Q: What's going to be new for The Show in '08?

A: I am actively involved in three other acquisitions. There are offers on the table, and I am confident that we'll get at least two of them. We're trying to grow vertically and horizontally through acquisition and focus within the current show.

Q: What do you want your tradeshow portfolio to look like in five years?

A: I would like The Show to reflect every component of the hospitality industry. Any component that would involve food and beverage would be my desire.

Q: You've been both a publisher and a tradeshow organizer, which is not the case for everybody. How does that work for you?

A: I'm amazed at the number of companies in the tradeshow business that have strong publishing resources but are not plugged into their tradeshows. I won't name any names, but I have met very strong players in the tradeshow business who have very strong publishing operations, and the two don't even know each other.

We see the relationship between our magazines and our shows as absolutely critical.

Q: Liquor is freely sampled at The Show. Do attendees ever over-imbibe?

A: Last year (2006), we had a very unpleasant show that scared the bejeebers out of me. There was a guy in Las Vegas and a guy in Georgia manufacturing artificial badges and selling them outside the door for 10 bucks. We had hundreds of people in the hall that should not have been there. Frankly, they got in and got drunk.

As a result, we decided we're going to clean this up and this is never going to happen again.