We are working on the floor plan lay-out now. With two exceptions, every vendor and manufacturer that was at last year's event will be back again at the 2006 event. In addition, 5 new ones have already been added. We expect to add more to that total by the time we close out the booth sales around the end of October. 32 booths were sold last year, we expect to fill between 45 and 50 this year.

The rod builders' tables are still available. 4 of the 8 have been spoken for. If you want to take advantage of this half-rate opportunity, get in touch with me as soon as you can. Once these are gone, that's it.

The first round of direct mailings starts this week. I have been fortunate to "score" what is perhaps the largest active mailing list of custom rod builders in existance. Each of the builders on that list will be getting a direct mailing concerning the show in the next 30 days. I fully expect that this will greatly increase our turnout for the event. Vendors should be quite happy, again, with the attendance.

In November, another 50,000 general interest fishermen will also receive a direct mailing concerning the show. The focus will be on the basic rod building seminar which Jim Upton handles, and getting more fishermen out to view the custom rods from the likes of Mickel's Custom Rods and Mark Crouse. More custom builders should take advantage of this opporutnity to show their wares, in public, to the general fishing public. This group won't respond, percentage-wise, in the same way as the rod building market will, but we're seeing more fishermen attending each year. The goal is to have a show that is of interest not just to rod builders, but to the general fishing public as well.

We also have some advertising venues open to us this year that we did not have last year. This will also increase attendance at the 2006 event.

Things are shaping up nicely and we're in high gear for major promotional efforts during the next couple of months. As good as the 2005 event was, this one will be even bigger and better.

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Out of curiousity, out of 50,000 fishermen how many really would come to the show? Seems like a gigantic turn out unless not many actually respond.

Any mailing to a general group is not going to result in a high percentage of response. Thus, you have to contact a huge number of people in order to get the hoped for result. Most general direct mailings that are not specifically targeted to the exact clientele your product (the show) is aimed it, rarely ever get more than about a 2% response. In fact, 2% would be considered an exceptional response. I would hope that we could get 1% of those contacted to attend the show. I'd be very happy with that result for this particular mailing.

With advertising and direct mailing done to actual custom rod builders, the expected result would be a bit higher, perhaps as much as 5%. The number of rod builders who will receive direct mail advertising for the show this year will be about double what it was last year. I don't expect rod builder attendance to double again this year, but I will not be surprised to see it grow by half again.

Advertising result is about numbers. You're dealing with only a few percent that will respond so in order to get the result you want you have to contact the appropriate number of people at the outset. If you want 1,000 rod builders at your show, then you have to contact at least 25,000 to 30,000 builders to have any chance of attaining that number. And, you have to offer something worthwhile to boot - advertising is only half the game, the actual product (in this case, the event itself) constitutes the other half.



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You'll get a 100% resonse from me. I wouldn't miss it for the world!