Show to Grow

Trade shows get low rankings from business owners when the cash flow slows. Nobody’s going to blame you if 2009 is the year that you decide to stay home.
Of course, it’s pretty hard to blame someone if they can’t be found, and the shop door’s locked for good. A business can die for lack of customers, but the biggest contributing cause is often inertia.
Regular readers of Stone Business know that I urge everyone to take in an industry trade show as often as possible. I’ve even lent my name and face to promotional efforts, including last year’s StonExpo. (Luckily, I wasn’t blamed for scaring away potential attendees with my mug.)
Two big shows are looming on the calendar, with Coverings 2009 in Chicago next month and Stone+tec in Nuremberg, Germany, in May. And, later this year, Marmomacc starts its annual run in Verona at the end of September, followed by StonExpo in Las Vegas several weeks later in October.
Finding the resources to head off to a trade event when cash accounts are going down and shop downtime is heading up can be difficult. For most of us, though, it’s not impossible.
Do me a favor. At least think about it for a few minutes. Part of your future depends on it.
While I’m an advocate of attending shows, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of industry confabs, either. The rest of my life goes on hold as I trudge around anonymous-looking halls, often on too little sleep and too much coffee. At times, it feels like you’re in the world’s largest family reunion, except that all the attendees are your in-laws.
It’s part of my job to go to trade shows, but that’s not the only reason. I’ve yet to attend one where I didn’t receive something that paid back all the time, money and consumption of indeterminate salt and grease that passed for food: I learned something.
There’s much to be said for industry publications and Websites; there’s more knowledge available than ever for any trade, stone included. At Stone Business, we do our best to give it focus and make it relevant. There’s one thing we can’t do: For all our talents, we can’t personalize it into a custom product addressing your exact needs.
Trade shows, meanwhile, offer a do-it-yourself approach, where anyone can mix and match plenty of learning opportunities. Some of those come through seminars and workshops – particularly at U.S. events – on a variety of subjects. You get a broad selection of presentations tailored to your trade. (Editor’s note: In keeping with the current push for transparency, I’m on this year’s StonExpo educational advisory committee.)
Admittedly, I’ve seen some excellent seminars and horrible lectures at shows, although it’s been definitely more of the former than the latter. Even with the worst, however, something good’s come out of it, even if the audience offers better information than the leader.
Expo floors exist for vendors to sell their products and services, but there’s plenty to be gleaned by showing up and asking questions. Sometimes you’ll find a product made to fit your needs, and other times you’ll see how to adapt it for your shop. Those selling their wares at a stone-industry trade show often have a hand in product development, and they have a wealth of knowledge to tap for shop tips.
One thing I never tire of at trade shows is seeing attendees find the best resource of all: themselves. The Stone Fabricators Alliance does a particularly good job of this at StonExpo; while the group presents a great lineup at the StoneLive! Stage with its presentations, it’s the shop talk around the SFA booth that leads to some of the best knowledge-swapping at the show.
It goes on at nearly every other booth at any stone trade event, whether it’s in English, Spanish, Italian, German, French or some language I can’t begin to decipher. Two, three, four or more people congregate in an aisle, all carrying some plastic sack full of brochures that may or may not ever be read; it’s the tales of experience they’re trading that make the travel and the waiting and the walking worthwhile.
It’s easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm about the great things you’ll find at a trade show, but today’s economic climate also provides a chilly balance. Heading off to Chicago or Las Vegas or across the Atlantic takes money that isn’t as plentiful in stone shops as it was a few years ago. Gaining that knowledge is far from free.
I’m very aware of the costs; I book my own travel, for reasons I’ll detail soon in my blog. The current budgets lead to some hard decisions in my job, especially in attending trade shows.
It takes some hard bargaining and plenty of online hunting, but getting to trade shows – even those in other continents – isn’t as costly as you might think. Lower oil prices and a decline in travel have plenty of airlines and hotels rethinking and revising rates. The cheapest price I found to get to Chicago a few months ago is now only $100 less than the flight I booked to Germany last week.
Going to a trade show, even in the current doldrums, is still a good investment. The rate of return may be hard to determine in dollars and cents, but it’s the opportunity to learn that’ll give you the edge in staying open and moving ahead.

Emerson Schwartzkopf can be reached at emerson@stonebusiness.net. His blog can be found at Stone Business Online and stonebusinesseditor.wordpress.com.

This article first appeared in the March 2009 print edition of Stone Business ©2009 Western Business Media Inc.