Shooting Star Falls From the Vegas Sky

LAS VEGAS—How does a show go from being a TSW Fastest 50 winner to nearly nonexistent in just two years? The answer isn't entirely clear, but has something to do with a date change and a disagreement between the show's management and one of its vendors.

The 8-year-old MemoryTrends Trade Show for the scrapbook business won Tradeshow Week's annual award for being one of the 50 fastest-growing shows in 2005 and 2006. In 2005, it filled 106,659 net square feet at the Sands Expo & Convention Center and attracted 388 exhibiting firms. That was the year Primedia sold the show to Enthusiast Media. Nobody has released statistics for it since then.

According to a list on MemoryTrends' Web site – and backed up by a quick head-count on the showfloor – only nine exhibitors turned up for the most recent show, held Jan. 31-Feb. 2 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. They were stashed in a back corner of the much larger Photo Marketing Assn. Intl. Convention & Trade Show.

“This year, we had to do a soft launch with MemoryTrends,” said Ted Fox, CEO and executive director of PMA, the Worldwide Community of Imaging Assns. Last summer PMA struck a deal with MemoryTrends' current producer, CK Media, to collocate the two shows.

They must have known it would be challenging for MemoryTrends, which took place in September (for the last time at the Sands), then again in late January, less than two weeks before its biggest competitor, the Craft & Hobby Assn. Annual Convention & Trade Show, Feb. 10-13 in Anaheim.

What they weren't counting on was a little extra resistance to make it even more difficult.

Fox explained: “An issue came up with a third-party vendor that MemoryTrends was using for the show they had in September. There was a disagreement over the terms and obligations between the third-party vendor and MemoryTrends, and we weren't able to resolve that issue to our satisfaction until late November. As a consequence, we fell behind on our deadlines.”

He added that PMA had hoped to market the collocation aggressively to participants at September's MemoryTrends, but “we weren't able to do that because of some legal issues.”

Nobody from CK Media could be reached for comment.

PMA attendees, particularly retailers, liked the idea of collocating the scrapbooking and imaging events.

Don Hite, co-owner of Hite Photo, said, “I do like that they're converging, because we're expanding our store to include (scrapbook items). This makes it easier for us to find everything in one place.”

Melvin Hiller, manning the We R Memory Keepers booth in the tiny MemoryTrends area, said his company's decision to exhibit was based mainly on price. Although it was too early to tell whether he'd get a good return on the investment, he added that We R Memory Keepers would probably continue to participate in both PMA-MemoryTrends and the CHA show, because the company does a lot of albums, which are popular among PMA attendees.

Still, he added, “MemoryTrends is dead, isn't it?”

Jenny Pitchford of the Stamping Station said, “I think more people should have supported MemoryTrends.” She went to the collocated show in hopes of meeting more photo retailers and said that was going fairly well.

All the MemoryTrends exhibitors who spoke with TSW said they would continue to participate in CHA's show.

Fox is hopeful for the future. Asked whether he'd forge ahead with the PMA-MemoryTrends collocation, he said, “Absolutely.”

If they do take place together again next year, the pair will have more distance from CHA's show, scheduled Feb. 8-11 in Anaheim. PMA is slated for March 3-5, again at the LVCC.