I'm heading to the International Builders' Show in Orlando tomorrow, and am so curious to see how it goes, and what the tone is. Twenty years ago, it was a "can't miss" event for building products manufacturers. I remember hearing the speculation that some manufacturers had spent more than a million dollars on their booth for this grandaddy of trade shows. Anyone who was anyone exhibited at IBS. At one point, attendance at the show was estimated at more than 100,000.
But recently, a number of big players have decided to sit out a year or two (or more). Some of them attend the show, schedule meetings with customers and the media, but don't invest the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars just to share some floor space with thousands of other manufacturers. On the other hand, it appears that some smaller, new companies are seeing this as the perfect time to "break in" to IBS and get noticed in a less crowded field. Their attitude seems to be, "who cares if attendance is 'down' to 50,000 or so? That's still a lot of builders!"
How do you feel going into this year's IBS?
No comments:
Post a Comment