Welcome to our forum.
well......we're lucky in the fact that here in the cuse we have two shows a year. The Home Show in march, and the Great New York State Fair in late August. Which happens to be our main event, seeing as around 1 million people go to it annually over it's 11 day run. The home show is an ok weekend event for us. We almost have to have a booth there due to all of our competitors having booths there. For us they are great events, and don't really detract from sales in the showrooms, if anything they help us even more.
And the first thing everybody asked for was, "What's the show discount?"
I don't do them any more. The last one I did - run by "Capital Showcase" out of Sacramento, CA - cost me $5500 just to rent the space. It was a three-day show. More realistically it was a two-day show: it opened at 10 am on Friday, but the crowds didn't show up until after work that day. It closed at 6 on Sunday night, but it was empty and many vendors had torn down and blown away by 4.And it was held in the County Fairgrounds, so I had to pay a few hundred to them to have a power drop in the booth, and then of course were the costs of spas, display materials, staff to move and staff to sell, and then the sheer exhausting effort of the whole thing. And the first thing everybody asked for was, "What's the show discount?"
Believe me, I will never stop doing off site events! We spend over $200K a year in advertising and branding for our store in addition to having a great location dead center of town right on the interstate. I'm a huge advocate of getting out where the people are, including things like setting up a mall store during the holiday season. I just think we need to curb some of the greed of the show and fair promoters, I don't know of any other venue that has increased their margins by 30 to 50% in the last 3 years!
I agree the shows are fast becoming a waste of time due to cost. There is a 2 week fair in Toronto (1/2 hour drive away) that many big players attend, dealers cant really afford it unless they pool resources. I have had people tell me they are waiting for this event for the big deal. I ask "how much is a slice of pizza or a bottle of evian there and at your local vendor?" Ofcorse it is 2.5 times as much at the "EX". "Why do you think you are going to get such a good deal on a tub? Volume? Pizza Pizza is doing major volume, they are charging more." When you buy a spa at a homeshow / fair, you are not saving money. If there is a large discount, it is availible everyday or is inflated for the show. The booth cost big $.