So far, so good.
A few small exhibitors had flights canceled today and will be forced to set up on Tuesday morning. One of our Lifetime Achievement honorees had his flight cancelled as well and will only arrive late tonight after the event.
I sat with Dan Darby, Show Director, and here is what I learned:
- 325 exhibitors, about a 25% increase over 2021. Important to recall that about 75 exhibitors (mostly from China) were not invited because of various rules violations in 2019. Also, very few international companies are exhibiting for various travel reasons.
- 10,000+ attendees are expected, and most non-lighting trade shows in 2022 report strong on-site registrations. Dan expects that LightFair will see that as well.
- If one compares the attendee per exhibitor, the ratio was 1 to 26 in 2019. This year it is 1 to 29. This is a very important metric meaning that on a per-person basis, exhibitors will actually be busier. Also, the exhibitors are sending less people, so the ones that are here should be quite busy!
Dan also showed me the layout for 2023, and he reminded me of the giant columns in Javits and how those always got in the way. For 2023, they are putting 10 x 10s inline in those column rows. This helps in a few areas. First, it helps with the flow of rows, so you don’t have to walk around the columns. But more importantly, it helps break up the large booths, so you don’t have so many large competitors right next to each other. It will also give the smaller companies more exposure.
The move-in seems to be going quite well, and I walked the floor on Sunday and Monday morning looking for complaints–none so far.