We still have some numbers to crunch but from the gate attendance, some sales figures and a somewhat perhaps less than scientific "straw poll" taken in the lunch area on Saturday, we feel pretty sure that something like 800 to 900 rod builders attended this year's event. If you want to toss in the new guys who became rod builders over the weekend, we probably did hit 1,000 rod builders attending. Of course, these ranged from the occassional "two rods per year" builder, all the way up to the serious professional rod builder.

Someone below said that they thought the Rod Building Show was carrying the Fly Fishing Show at this point. I don't think we'd want to go that far, at least not just yet. Our informal poll seems to indicate that a little more than 1 out of 3 attendees were there specifically for the National Rod Building Show. I'll have to go through them again, but it looks like a solid 2 out of 5 people there were "our" attendees. Not bad for the second year. I'll get the final gate receipts for the show sometime tomorrow and let you know how many people, total, attended the combined shows.

I haven't talked to all the dealers yet but it's looking like about $50,000 worth of rod building blanks and components were sold during the two day event. If things go according to normal, about that much more will be sold in the coming weeks in residual sales made as a direct result of the show. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the National Rod Building Show created (or ultimately will create) $100,000 in sales for dealers in 2005. And the rod builders got some tremendous bargains in the process.

The main seminars averaged about 45 people attending. This was from a high of 89 to a low of 22 (well, due to a snafu on Sunday, one seminar only drew a single person, but only because the rooms got mixed up with the presenter in one and the actual audience in the other). There were 3 seminars running concurrenty all day, so that puts about 125 to 140 builders in the seminars every hour, all day, without really affecting the overall attendance downstairs in the main hall. Many asked that we not schedule them concurrently next year so they can attend more, but the very reason I put them this way was to reduce the expected crowds we would have experienced if they had been held one at a time. Still, we'll have a little change up for next year. Stay tuned. Jim Upton's basic rod building seminars drew very well and this should be very encouraging for the rod building industry and craft. And, we'll push these beginning rod building seminars even harder next year.

I know exactly what the RodMaker booth did in terms of numbers - 114 new subscriptions were sold during the two day event. That's more than double what I did last year (I really needed the extra work).

Still a lot of numbers to play with and work with for next year. The show wasn't perfect, but it was a huge success by just about all accounts. The few little things that weren't perfect coupled with the many great suggestions from the builders will only make the 2006 event that much bigger and better. Not bad at all.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2005 11:12AM by Tom Kirkman.

Tom,

I am happy for you, Tom. Sounds like a great event. Wish I could have been there.

Ron