24 replies to this topic

[dusty]

What did you see as new, unusual or different this year?

Found Global Miniatures quite by accident. They will customize your photograph into an original water color painting and frame it. Great for an executive gift.

Paramount Apparel can embellish hats in a variety of options. Also offers free spec samples.

Sierra Pacific Apparel. Nice product line of shirts and other apparel. Did not know they existed.

The Dooley Company finally had a knowledgeable sales rep manning their booth. Contact Nolan Knecht.


Was unable to walk the entire floor. 1600 suppliers take up an enormous amount of space.
Think the show should be extended one more day.
Food prices at concession stands outrageous. Coffee at $2.75 a cup.

Distributor attendance, was way down. Plenty of almost empty aisles. Easy to see and talk to suppliers. No crowds.

Overall rating: B+.

[royster13]

I heard Nolan learned how to print cups before he could ride a bike.....lol.....Good customer service must run in the family.....RCS...

[benbaker]

Had a great show and walked EVERY single isle.

Three pairs of shoes are a must:-)

Most interesting thing I saw was www.inoutdesigns.com "cellite"

Fits with double back tape onto the back of almost any cell, great for realtors.

Sorry we missed each other Dusty.

Ben

PS Isa and Barbara . . . had a great time at dinner with your friends.:lol:

dusty2 said:

What did you see as new, unusual or different this year?

Found Global Miniatures quite by accident. They will customize your photograph into an original water color painting and frame it. Great for an executive gift.

Paramount Apparel can embellish hats in a variety of options. Also offers free spec samples.

Sierra Pacific Apparel. Nice product line of shirts and other apparel. Did not know they existed.

The Dooley Company finally had a knowledgeable sales rep manning their booth. Contact Nolan Knecht.


Was unable to walk the entire floor. 1600 suppliers take up an enormous amount of space.
Think the show should be extended one more day.
Food prices at concession stands outrageous. Coffee at $2.75 a cup.

Distributor attendance, was way down. Plenty of almost empty aisles. Easy to see and talk to suppliers. No crowds.

Overall rating: B+.

[A G]

Didn't make it. Daughter had a wedding reception in Albuquerque, NM the week before. Helped shovel snow out of 3 drive ways - 11 or 12" - biggest snow storm there, they said on the news, since 1960 (year my wife was born)! Too pooped to attend the PPAI Expo. Have to try in 08!

A G

[jimknecht]

dusty2 said:

The Dooley Company finally had a knowledgeable sales rep manning their booth. Contact Nolan Knecht.

No argument here!;) I hear his dad is losing it.

dusty2 said:

Distributor attendance, was way down. Plenty of almost empty aisles. Easy to see and talk to suppliers. No crowds.

Once again, I agree. Especially on the last day of the show... Saturday. Slowest 3rd day I have ever seen. We were right next to Worldwide.. right by the front door & even they were very slow. You think it has something to do with distributors not wanting to work on a weekend? I know I would rather spend my weekend with my family (& horses). But you watch, PPAI will spin it as a SUPER show.

dusty2 said:

Think the show should be extended one more day.

Sorry, but have you lost your mind? You need to spend more time working the show as opposed to chatting with Isa.:D Seriously though, these shows are quite expensive for everyone, but especially vendors. I don't mind spending the money & giving up my time to work a show, however I expect distribuors to show up. If 3 days was slow, last thing we need is another day! I was thinking the opposite.... maybe it is time to go to 2. Hopefully this was just an anomaly due to the scheduling change.

[LouieM]

I'm with Jim on making this a 2 day show. The traffic the 1st 2 days was very good. We saw 1100 people the 1st 2 days of the show. On Saturday we saw a total of 84. This not meant to be a slight on the distributors that visited us on Saturday, but it was a waste of our time & money to be in the booth Saturday.

We are leaving for Orlando today. I sure hope it is a good show. We are worried with the Friday - Saturday format. If anyone is attending stop and say hello booth 1003. I have a feeling we may get lonely on Saturday.

[jimknecht]

LouieM said:

I have a feeling we may get lonely on Saturday.

Me too! Normally Orlando is a great show for us, but the weekend format scares me.

[GreatJackets]

As a vendor, I thought the turnout was OK. The fewer catalog collectors the better. I find that when turnout is low, the better the caliber of distributors are there and we have more time to talk with them.
I had a chance to walk the show and was happy to say, I saw more new products this time out than I've seen at any 3 shows combined. We had a revolutionary new apparel line (Ingeo - shirts made from CORN) and while the numbers were low, the response and was great.
Saturday was horribly slow, but it was nice to take Sunday off before going back to work!

[RelKey]

Anyone else out there greet the Press a Print folks with a hearty "Happy Halloween?"...

[dusty]

Jim:

The show should be three full days. Start on a Wednesday and finish on Friday.
I agree having the last day on a Saturday into the afternoon is not best use of time for either suppliers or distributors.
Let's hope this was a scheduling situation, what with the first week of the new year and the CES show conflict.

[FindingPromo]

This event takes 3 days to cover completely, from most all my good friends and customers that have provided me feedback.

Depending on how you "work it," via grid approach, visiting pre-planned locations and/or returning to pre-planned locations after taking a tour, there are many ways to work an event, in a way that works best for you and the time you can spend, that means so much to all of our businesses.

2007 Dates seemed to be the best available, on the calendar, all the while trying to understand the Jan 1st Holiday and all, and finishing up before CES rolled into town to push up room rates etc.

2008 dates were posted as a M-F, January 14th-16th, with Assn Meeting Day, Education Day and the 3 days of show dates accordingly. Saturday being a be-at-home with family day and all should not be an issue for '08.

From most all of my supplier partners that have chimed in, this year's event was a success for them. Some other suppliers want "number of scans" some always want "a busy booth," I for one, would always prefer interested traffic in the booths, that are there to learn and understand about Suppliers the the support and products they bring, and much more then simply "drive bys" that simply want to be scanned.

Suppliers that did advance promotion, participated in some on site promotion, had ample staff and booth space on site, and follow up for Distributors even beyond their expectations will do best.

Distributors that spent the time at the Suppliers they like to work with and/or would like to begin to, to know more about the individuals and the products that they support them with, will do best, in the long run.

Now it's time for all of us to be working back in our local markets and providing that additional follow up.

Here's to a great year everyone!

[RelKey]

This year our booth seemed to be a bit slower but our scans were up about 20% over last year.

This year, our 10x10 booth had 3 open sides (30 feet) in which to communicate with the interested distriutors which helped a lot. At our previous shows we only had one open side (10 feet) and were constantly slammed with 20-30 people all wanting questions answered. So it just seemed slower but actually it was just a bit more manageable with more space in which to work.

It get's so busy that many distributors go into our neighbor's booth to get our attention... at the SAAGNY show, the distributors pulled our neighbor's booth down on top of them. One of the chocolate companies often requests the booth next to us because of the number of distributors hanging around to get a duplicate house key cut and to discuss our product. This candy company often comes out of their booth to hand out samples in front of our booth.

Having Saturday as the 3rd day was just a waste of money for us. My daughtor was getting married Sunday so I couldn't man the booth. Good thing... the number of scans on Saturday was less than 1/10th the scans on Thursday & Friday. Not even worth paying someone to be there. I'm glad this Saturday thing was just a one time deal with PPAI.

[tedp]

I agree that it should be 3 full days; Wed through Fri. I believe that this year, the January 2 start date killed a lot of traffic.

I suspect next year will bring more traffic.

Excellent show - lots of new ideas. Sorry to have missed you, Bob.

Ted

[jimknecht]

From a distributor's perspective, due to the number of supplier booths, I can see why the show needs to last 3 days. That is assuming you work the show & don't fly down the aisle like you are late for your airline flight. Watch your fellow distributors & see what I'm talking about.

From a supplier's perspective, due the number of distributors (especially on the third day), the show needs to last 2 days. Seems like to me, we suppliers are doing our part, but you distributors (& PPAI) need to do better. PPAI needs to do more things to attract more distributors & more things to keep them on the floor all three days. PPAI could learn a lot from ASI. We just got back from ASI Orlando & we received more contacts there than PPAI Vegas..... with a fraction of the number of distributors. EVERY supplier I talked with said the same. We had almost as many contacts on the first day of the ASI Show than we did all 3 days of PPAI. The 1st day of Orlando was HUGE for everyone. The isles were packed with distributors & most were interested in working the show & learning from the exhibitors. The second was very steady most of the day.

I understand the new show dates could be a factor, but I have noticed a decline in the worth of the PPAI show for several years. Even though originally I was opposed to ASI getting into the tradeshow business, they have proven me wrong. These ASI shows have become very large regionals that attract large numbers of professional distributors. They appear to be of a manageable size & duration as opposed to PPAI which is so big as to be unmanageable. Makes me wonder.... is PPAI too big? From my perspective, we never get the "bang for the buck" at PPAI as we do at ASI shows.

[cmroma]

I did not attend the PPAI show this year (first time I missed this show in a long time) because of the start date (Jan. 2nd).
Too close to New Years celebrations - this is family time for me.

It worked out better for me to attend the ASI Orlando show.
Can't say that I was disappointed.....it was a great show!
Much easier to navigate the aisles, much easier to spend a few quality minutes with suppliers (for the most part).

I agree with Jim......this was a very good showing for ASI.

Craig

[worldofpromo]

Hi , I am looking for the Ingeo supplier. I have searched the web and can't find them. Do you happen to know how? I'm still looking for eco products. Thanks so much!

[GreatJackets]

Look no further! Ingeosales.com Google & Yahoo wont have us in their systems for a few more days. There is a Florida rep too. New Z Lander and Mill Direct are the principles and we had a great show at Orlando as well as PPAI.

[worldofpromo]

GreatJackets said:

Look no further! Ingeosales.com Google & Yahoo wont have us in their systems for a few more days. There is a Florida rep too. New Z Lander and Mill Direct are the principles and we had a great show at Orlando as well as PPAI.

Thank you!!!!

[kristiy]

Jim, I saw you mentioned that it was "scary" that the ASI show in Orlando was over a Saturday, but to the best of my recollection, all the 7 or 8 years I ever did that show as a supplier, it always included a saturday.
Am I wrong on that?

[tedp]

Jim, I find your post very interesting. Maybe Vegas IS so big and daunting that it scares folks away. One thing I CAN say is, I got so caught up in talking to suppliers, by the end of day 1, I'd only gotten through half of the top floor. Since I was leaving Friday night, I had Friday to catch the 1st floor, and the balance of the 2nd floor. This is why I enjoy the traveling shows as much as I do. You can stop and talk shop, get new ideas, see new things, and not miss a single booth.

Problem is, how do we get exposure to all of those oddball, unusual, sometimes currently regional - wanting to expand, lines that are at Las Vegas?

I wonder if there's a way to split up the days for suppliers? Something like 1st floor on days 1 and 2, and second floor on days 2 and 3? Is that insane? I know it's pretty far out there, but it might be a way of getting folks to stay longer, spread out their time more, and suppliers would only have 2 days to contend with. I don't know, it's just a thought.

We're all just trying to find some balance.

Great meeting you, Jim. (and Isa and Ben, too!)

Ted