Nith Sisombath

Comfort Found at ASD/AMD
August 31, 2008

I recently spent some time with a friend of mine who was in town for ASD/AMD. She recently bought a small boutique in the Beverly Hills areas. I’ve walked ASD/AMD several times before in the past but my mindset and attitude it past has always been from the show management point of view. This time I was walking it as a buyer so the experience was very different I wasn’t speeding around the hall covering the show at an isle an minute like I normally do.

Your pace as a buyer is much slower it takes time to look at the merchandise evaluate it for sale ability your store. The pace was a bit of a pleasant change but there were a few times when she spent an hour or two hour in a booth picking out merchandise selecting the right style, material, color, etc. That I found myself getting a bit bored. 

After the first exhibitor I decided to talk to exhibitors that were nearby and find out a little more about their participation in the show. What I found out was very informative. I found that most of these exhibitors have been the show for ten years or more in the same booth. I spoke with a gentleman that told me he had been in the show for over twenty years in the same booth location.

I also found that the show does have a very friendly and familiar feel to it. Buyers and exhibitors are very social. It seems that most have very long standing business relationships that have developed into friendships over the years. I heard a lot of buyers asking “What’s new?” “How have you been?”  

The show is very mature, very stable and very establish. This is the kind of establish show you return to when the economy goes bad because it seems to have a comfort level associated with it. I would compare it to kids that have ventured out on their own and run into some financial problems and end up moving back home before things get stable again. 

It’s no wonder why this show seems to be doing well even with the economic downturn where shows are being postponed or cancelled this show is still going strong. If you look at show static reports you will see that long standing establish shows are still doing very well and seem to be doing better when the economy does take a turn for the worse. Because they are established and have shown proven results in the past and its just human nature that when bad times come around you go back to what’s familiar, what’s comfortable and what’s worked in the past.

Now I’m not saying that you will find this feeling at all of ASD/AMD because you won’t. When you have a show of this size that spans three different facilities: the Mirage, the Sands Expo Convention Center and South Halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center it’s hard to permeate the sense of comfort and familiarity throughout the rest of the show. You really only get this type of feel from the two sections of the show that are at the Mirage.

The show at the Sands Expo feels very tight and crowded do to the nature of the merchandise and size of the isles and when you’re in the lower level the feeling of stuffiness is increased by the low ceilings.

You will also notice large number security guards and badge scanners at all entrances into ASD/AMD shows.  I’m sure they want to keep track of how many attendees are going into each section of the show and what the overlap is but to me it seems like over kill and they might be better off going with some lower lever RFID chip to accomplish the same mission. This would reduce the number of badge check hours which can be significant for a show with so many entrances. It would also make it more efficient and less physically invasive and intimidating for their attendees. With the different levels and types of RFID technology I’m sure they can find a vendor that can do this for them at a reasonable cost. The reduced cost in man hours used to scan badges can go to help offset possible even covering this cost. It would also increase the accuracy in their counts at each entrance. 

In the long run the technology will definitely save them money and in today’s economic climate and competition everyone is giving out deals.

Posted by Nith Sisombath on August 31, 2008 | Comments (0)