Manufacturing Show Makes Vegas Debut
Diane Taylor -- Tradeshow Week, 10/17/2008 1:14:00 PM
John Catalano, group manager for expositions and operations for the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, admitted that locating a manufacturing show in Las Vegas was risky.
“Fabtech Intl. & AWS Welding Show has typically been a middle-America show,” said Catalano, who also manages the event. “We weren’t sure how our attendees would react to our first Western location.”
Fabtech debuted in Cleveland in 1981 as a regional show and then moved to Chicago as a biennial. In 1998, it became an annual event, held in Chicago in odd years and Cleveland, or most recently Atlanta, in even years.
Fabtech, a 2008 Tradeshow Week Fastest 50 winner, also was a test for Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority confirmed that the show, held Oct. 6-8 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, was the first major manufacturing show to choose Las Vegas as a location.
The result? Fabtech’s hoped-for pre-registration of 20,000 swelled to 25,000. An original estimate of 800 exhibitors grew to more than 1,000. The almost 400,000 square feet of exhibit space in the LVCC North Hall represented an increase of 28 percent over Fabtech’s comparable 2006 show in Atlanta.
“On the first day, we had so many people at registration and in the food courts, we had to scramble and make changes,” Catalano said. “The turnout was phenomenal.” He credited Las Vegas as a destination for a good deal of the turnout. “Our records indicate 48 percent of our visitors were first-time attendees, and 30 percent of attendees were from the Rocky Mountain and Western states, a huge increase from recent shows in Chicago and Atlanta,” Catalano added. “International attendance was also up an estimated 15 percent.”
Manufacturing engineer Joel Mundt of Spokane, Wash.-based Wagstaff said he attended Fabtech in Las Vegas “for training and to see what’s new.” The Western location was welcome but, Mundt added, he would attend Fabtech every year regardless of location. “I’m a certified welding instructor, and the conference sessions on welding are particularly important to me,” he added.
Fabtech is sponsored by the American Welding Society, Fabricators and Manufacturers Assn. Intl. and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. This year, the sponsorship also included the Precision Metalforming Assn., and next year, the show will add another partner, the Assn. for Manufacturing Technology. The 2009 show, to be held at Chicago’s McCormick Place, will likely grow even larger as laser and fabricating exhibitors of the Intl. Machine Tool Show become part of Fabtech. “These partnerships are good for our metalworking customers,” Catalano said, “basically bringing everything relating to metal forming, fabrication and welding into one event.”
And will Fabtech return to Sin City? Catalano already reserved space in Las Vegas in 2012.
