A Matter of Choice

  It leads to a question that’s being asked again and again: Are there too many trade shows?
  To which I respond, looking around the world’s largest trade event for stone: Are there too products?
  It’s anything but a smart-alec question. When you can’t remember how many bridge saws or milling tools or slabs of Baltic Brown you’ve seen in a day, information overflow begins. Then you start wondering where you saw which product at which trade show, and you get a blur of aisles and booth numbers and machines.
  And, I’m not even talking about any trade event in the United States. Not yet, anyway.
  Anyone thumbing through a distributor catalog or wandering a supplies outlet in this country can see that, as far as stone machinery and accessories, the United States market does far more consuming than creation. Don’t start getting defensive about this; I’m as patriotic as anyone about the good ol’ USA, and we quarry and manufacture plenty of quality goods. However, it’s not enough.
  Consider that we import more than 80 percent of the dimensional stone used in this country every year. And, take a look at the country of origin for the saw, CNC machine, grinding disc or sealer in any shop. It won’t take long to find home addresses in Italy or India or China or some other over-the-border location.
  In a supply-and-demand global economy, such a spread of products makes sense. A country that does more finishing work would be the home for that kind of machinery. Another place concentrating on quarrying would manufacture the heavy equipment.
  That’s how it works for a majority of products in the stone industry – at least for the ones that appear at U.S. trade shows. Travel beyond the national boundaries, however, and the market picture starts to get fuzzy.
  My spouse once defined hell as a place where you got your choice of two jobs in perpetuity: managing rental properties or attending trade shows. (She later added milking Shorthorn cattle and spending every weekend attending weddings as other options, but that’s another story.)  I’ve marched many a trade-show mile in my current existence and I can’t quite agree with her assessment yet, but I do get a strange kind of deja vu in the stone trade.
  Take a walk through the largest trade events in three major European countries – Spain’s PIEDRA, Germany’s Stone+tec, and Italy’s Marmomacc – and the sights get very familiar. It’s more than the same exhibitors appearing in the same spot for the same event time after time; it’s the same kind of product over and over and over and ….
  Then it hits you: It’s not the same product. There’s something different. You start picking up cans and bottles of stone-treatment products and peeking at model plates, and there’s a subtle change. Things don’t perfectly match at every event.
  The picture gets clearer after collecting and reading the large stack of different stone magazines from around the world that get offered at these events. In plenty of countries – not just Spain, Germany or Italy – the stone industry appears to be reinventing itself with a slew of home-grown products.
  This is more than a case of copycat manufacturing or widespread industrial espionage. Once stone production and fabrication begins ramping up in a country, locally made products and machines begin appearing. It’s possible to buy a bridge saw made in Poland, or a resin-finishing system from Turkey. Nobody’s selling a production center from Vietnam yet, but don’t bet against it.
  But why? Is there something wrong with the market economy here? What’s wrong with the products already available?
  You can pose the question for stone products and stone trade events: Aren’t there too many as it is? Just as with products, trade events – whether stateside or across the seas – appear because someone determines that there’s a need. Maybe it’s because of location, or availability, or some specialized need, but there’s some factor that makes it attractive to offer to the market. It’s the essence of competition and business itself.
  It’s also the the customers who’ll pick the winners. If they fail to respond to new choices, the upstarts will disappear. If a new event (or product) catches on, it’s an indication that needs are changing, or there’s an underserved market. And, if all are successful, it’s a winning situation for the buyers and the sellers.
  Trade events for the U.S. stone trade could also get a big surprise in offering too many choices and diluting all the shows in 2004. Given the dynamics of the market, though, that’s doubtful, unless demand for products takes a nosedive – and there’s nothing to indicate a fabrication slowdown
  The proliferation of shows also means that there’s no excuse to not attend at least one, if not several, during 2004. You’ll find plenty of products in all those aisles of exhibits, and I’ll be there, too.
  It sure beats managing rental properties.

This article first appeared in the December 2003 print edition of Stone Business. ©2003 Western Business Media Inc.