EdisonReport believes that there are too many shows in our industry and we would be better served with fewer shows. Having said that, we heard relatively good things about last week’s LightShow West in Las Vegas. Your humble editor was not able to attend because of the SDA Showcase in New York last week and the Hong Kong Lighting Fair this week. Did we say there were too many shows?
Our sources report:
- When first walking in, LightShow West had a nice buzz to it—really loud crowd noise and a lot of traffic. On the other hand, Chinese booths are all moved to the far right side and in a corner, making for difficult traffic flow.
- Two lighting events in one building! LDI was in the North Hall, so when LSW closed Thursday at 5pm, LDI opened the next day (both at LV Convention Center). Many exhibitors said they had noticeable LDI foot traffic thursday from attendees/exhibitors coming by to check out LSW. Although these are different segments of our industry, it was a smart move.
- One of the main CEU seminars was right on the show floor, and all seats filled by 11:15 a.m. (show opened at 11 a.m.) with a crowd standing around the filled seats, which created a nice energy. There was another seminar at 3 p.m. on the second (closing) day of the show that was also full; a big circle of people stood around the filled chairs, which was impressive considering it was three hours away from the end of the entire show. Other shows should experiment with having seminars right on the show floor.
- Show was dominated by two major reps and their vendors. One rep had a Vegas themed deal where the visitor accumulates chips for a raffle ticket. The prizes were: Apple Watch, MacBook, and an iPad.
- Overall, decent turnout with very positive responses from exhibitors; I did hear some grousing from others that the LA LightShow West has much better specification turnout, but a lot of that appeared to be from companies based in LA or California. Almost everyone I asked said they would return next year to the LA show. One non-exhibitor reported that they will likely exhibit in the future.
- More distributors and contractors than specifiers—as to be expected.
- Not a lot of new products.
- Apparently the Chinese contingent of exhibitors didn’t feel they needed to put up with the late (7 p.m.) closing first day— many of the Chinese booths were abandoned or covered up by 6 p.m. prior to the scheduled 7 p.m. close.