A Tale of Two Trade Shows

I had the unique "privilege" of attending two trade shows in Las Vegas over the first 11 days of 2012.  I use quotes around "privilege" because one trade show tends to leave me exhausted.  Doing two--with the second one being CES--was a bit over the top. 

But the experience reminded me of the differences between our market and the wholesale/retail one.  Differences I may have forgotten, or taken for granted.  I thought I'd summarize them:

SIZE

PPAI's Expo is the unquestioned largest show in our market.  It's both floors of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, and commandeers much of the meeting room space.  CES takes all of Las Vegas--ALL of it--and this year saw record attendance of 150,000.

CES is the Disney World of conventions--there's no way to see everything in three days, or four, or fourteen.  You have to come to the event with a specific plan or else you'll find yourself wandering aisles of stuff that starts to look the same after a while.  Come to think of it, that's what a lot of Expo attendees say...


ATTITUDE

Our business is very non-confrontational.  Yeah, we get a little stressed sometimes, and there's the odd cross word that passes between suppliers, reps, and clients.  But CES is full of highly-caffienated people looking for every possible advantage.  They work on razor-thin margins and are constantly under attack from the Big Kids of the market (Best Buy, Fry's, and WalMart to name three).  So, the relationship between buyer and seller is much more adversarial than it is in our market.  For that, we can be thankful...


FRAGMENTATION

PPAI is what the Marketing types call a "vertical" show--the buyers and sellers are all in one building.  CES is ostensibly the same thing, but the number of markets that comprise the show is staggering.   There's audio and video specialists, computer guys, mobile device suppliers, there's even a car company (Ford) exhibiting there.  Finding out who's aiming at whom takes a bit of knowledge.  There are so many different agendas a scorecard would be functionally useless. 


OUTCOMES

The electronics industry sends "buyers" to the shows.  They make merchandising decisions that result in orders being written.  The next order I write at Expo will be my first.  We're presenting ideas, and those need to be floated past end-users for feedback before any "buying" gets done.  It's that difference alone that makes CES a much different experience than Expo.  While we may have "buyers" at Expo, they're actually "idea collectors" that must filter their "buying" past another stakeholder before anything gets "bought". 


I spent 10 years in the electronics racket.  It's a young person's game, and a glance at the aisles at CES confirms this.  The business is a roiling pot of ongong destruction--entire product categories disappear from year to year because of advances in technology.  Retailing forms come and go, major players find themselves threatened by entities that didn't even exist a year prior.

This process guarantees a dynamic market--no way for moss to grow under anybody's feet.  And my two days at CES sent me into flashbacks of my time in the business--some very pleasant, others very much not so.  It also made me take stock of the advantages I have working in the incentive market--not the least of which is the lack of animosity between buyer and seller.  I left the CE business 23 years ago and to be honest I don't miss it at all. 

I do know this--if I have the chance to attend CES next year--I'll pass.  I like it better here in our cul-de-sac where everyone knows everyone else and the Bad Guys are pretty easy to spot.  I think Thanksgiving came a little early in 2012...


Pete