Attention All Shoppers

In 1983, when Pacifica Publishing hired David Loechner to do sales for Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, the show was no more than a twinkle in the now-defunct, business-to-business media company's eye, and Loechner himself no more than a clerk at a ski shop trying to figure out what to do with his college degree.

Twenty-four years later, the show is a semiannual powerhouse that occupies two spots on the Tradeshow Week 200; Pacifica Publishing has gone through a series of acquisitions and rebrandings that eventually put its former assets in the hands of Nielsen Business Media; and Loechner sits atop that company's most prolific division, tradeshow-wise, the Retail Group.

Not bad for a ski bum, which, by the way, Loechner said he still is. In fact, being one helped him in a number of ways. If the last two decades have taught him anything, he said, it's that the key to successfully managing a B-to-B media business is knowing the manufacturer, distributor, retailer and end-user sides of the industry equally well.

The trick to surviving in an ever-changing company, meanwhile, is being in the right place at the right time.

Loechner spoke with Tradeshow Week Senior Editor Heidi Genoist about Nielsen's restructuring, the impact the faltering economy might have on his group in 2008 and what he thinks it will take for tradeshows to remain viable in the future.

Question: It's been nearly a year since the restructuring that put you at the top of the Nielsen unit with the most – and biggest – tradeshows. What has the year been like?

Answer: It's been very rewarding. The strategy of the company was to connect the various data sets of Nielsen, and out of that the goal to provide new and better opportunities for our clients. The position for me fit into that. It wasn't about giving David a promotion; it was about becoming more client- and market-focused, which I appreciate because I've worked in markets, and I know it's a bit limiting to simply provide a customer with a one-dimensional solution.

Q: That one dimension being a tradeshow?

A: Yes. A show is just one aspect of a marketing strategy. Today, we're talking to customers about marketing solutions and managing, not just across platforms, but across markets, in order to provide greater efficiency and better benefits not just within those products, but across all the markets the products fit into.

Q: Recap the restructuring briefly.

A: We have 25 shows (seven or eight are TSW 200 shows), 20 conferences, eight monthly magazines and 11 Web sites. We're roughly broken into four groups: sports, merchandise, retail food and jewelry - all now integrated.

Q: What did reorganizing the business entail?

A: The first year was about successful integration: Does everyone understand the ultimate strategy, feel part of the creation of their own brand strategy? The first part was working through the organization - making sure we had the staff structure - which wasn't extremely tough, because we were roughly organized in this manner. The next step was developing the strategy. (The first year was) those two parts, as well as maintaining the discipline while all these changes were going on, the ongoing management of these divisions to continue to achieve success.

Q: Nielsen added Joe Flynn, David Korse and others from outside the company to the Retail Group. Why?

A: New people bring new vision, new ideas, see things from a different perspective. Joe Flynn (vice president of sports) was brought in to replace my role, as I was elevated, and David Korse (vice president and general manager of merchandise) replaced Sam Bundy (former merchandise group president), as Sam left. It wasn't strategic planning to find people to make a cultural change, but the people we hired had to not only, A, adapt to the way things are being done, but also, B, do things better. I also brought in Bailey Beeken (vice president of jewelry) from Advanstar to be the eyes and ears of the jewelry group, because they're a little farther from my office, and I wanted to ensure the daily management was going smoothly.

Q: What was the most challenging part of the transition?

A: That we also had commitments and promises to our clients and our markets that we had to live up to. … We also had our day jobs. Taking on a greater role, as well as trying to carry out your day job, was the most taxing. With a meaningful cultural change within the company, keeping people focused and motivated was also a challenge.

Q: What was the most rewarding?

A: Seeing success in it. Seeing excellent senior staff members putting their hearts and souls into achieving not only market success, but success for our new owners. We had no failure of integration, and everybody was very excited about being involved, not only in the strategic planning, but in their individual brands.

Q: Is the restructuring working out as planned?

A: It's working fabulously. The Retail Group had never been connected. When we connected it, we connected key buyers with manufacturers across markets and have started segmenting and putting them together.

Q: Can you give a few examples?

A: At ASD/AMD (Las Vegas – Variety Show, Gift Show and Jewelry Show ), we put a pavilion for JA (International Jewelry Show – Winter in New York City) in Las Vegas, because of the crossover in the jewelry markets. We began a conference called Hispanic 360, using consumer insight data that Nielsen has collected across its various businesses on Hispanic consumers as it relates to food and shopping. We connected the data, and through the conference and our publications – such as Progressive Grocer and Retailer News – created synergy for retailers looking to maximize their businesses with the Latino shopper.

We also have a number of boutique retailers across our Action Sports Retailer and Outdoor Retailer databases, and we're launching jewelry events in those markets for people who are going to those events looking for jewelry in addition to the typical products you find there.

Q: Is it all having the desired effect?

A: Well, we had double-digit retail growth, in terms of the bottom line, this year.

Q: Do you expect that rate of growth to continue, given the sluggish holiday season for retailers and the economic slow-down some predict this year?

A: Well, certainly a poor economy reflects on all segments across the board. We've seen other cases where weak economic conditions have not affected sports and recreation as much as other sectors; in fact, in some cases, they've advanced. (During economic slow-downs) you're going to focus more on family and recreation, and those are things served by our sports business. Then, there's always the flip side. The high-end jewelry market, for instance, may or may not feel the effects of a weak dollar.

You have to look at the economy segment by segment. We don't look at the retailer market being weak at Christmas. We look at the separate performance of mass merchandisers, chains, independent specialty stores, to determine what happened. In some cases, chain does poorly and specialty is strong. It's nice when they hit at the same time.

Q: How do you plan for it when they don't?

A: Our primary strategy is developed once every three years, updated once a year and evolved throughout the year. We're coming up on addressing that. There's nothing we do on a panic basis.

There's also a lag between a tradeshow and the economy. A show may not see the net effect of the economy for a year, because its success is determined by how much retailers are willing to buy. The retailers still come in the same numbers, but if they sell poorly, it's the next season you see the effect.

Q: Speaking of timing, do you still have the multi-show, multi-year contracts with the major convention facilities in Las Vegas that your predecessors had?

A: I probably shouldn't talk about our contractual obligations. The scale and scope of Nielsen expos provides us the advantage of being able to request and receive as much as we can in some of the large cities we go into.

Having said that, we absolutely would not put any show in any facility where the market didn't first and foremost feel that was the best opportunity, period. We look at the market, and then negotiate in the cities where the market wants to be.

Q: Is Outdoor Retailer locked into Salt Lake City?

A: We are booked there through 2010 and are working to receive new contracts for future years. Our desire is to stay in Salt Lake City, because that's the market's desire. We're currently working with Salt Lake to identify what (space is) available and what's needed going forward.

Q: What do you think will keep tradeshows successful in the future?

A: I see no one solution alone being able to serve all a market's needs going forward. In the old days you could buy some print ads or booth space, and you were done. Face-to-face serves the market in one way, print in another way and online in a third way. I see an evolution toward people feeling that being exposed online is more important than in print. I'm not seeing face-to-face budgets decline, but shift.

How people are using shows has evolved. They used to come to buy and sell product. Today, it might be for media exposure, to talk critical business needs with key accounts, for sales leads, social networking, education. To serve a market, we have to understand what its needs are and have multi-dimensional events that consolidate all those opportunities.