Tradeshows – These, of course, are events where a group of companies with common offerings exhibit their products and services to an audience of potential customers. It has worked for many years. The business-to-business trade show market has changed over the years also. For one thing, prospective attendees for tradeshows are less available than ever to attend events. Many of the very large business-to-business events that have a huge legacy such as Con-Expo/Con-Agg and the Offshore Technology Conference are examples of events at their peak right now. Thousands of exhibits display products for tens or even hundreds of thousands of attendees. These are very large events that have been built up over decades because they represent very significant markets.
Other events have gone past their period of peak relevance and have declined over the years to smaller audiences, fewer attendees, or event extinction. Too large can be a problem. To expensive can also be a problem for trade shows and they can price themselves right out of business.
Included in the costs to do a tradeshow are the space cost, booth contents, fees to move things into the show and out, and personnel expenses. For this reason, a show needs to have a fairly good return on investment in order for a company to participate.
