There are a lot of things that work against a rod building event on this size and scale. Money and attendees being two of them. Holding the show for more days increases my cost in booking the hall (figure as much as $5,000 to $6,000 per day). Then you've got to rely on builders coming in from all over the country - you can't do a show like this with just the builders in the local or regional area. And that means advertising, lots of it. And not just constant blurbs on the internet. You won't reach more than about 10% of the hoped for market that way.
So we've got to be careful in expanding too much. I want the show to be a better value this year, for everybody. The work I've done so far has paid off. I can reduce the admission price by about 20%.. I can reduce the booth fees by about 20%. But I won't add more retail vendors until I'm convinced we can continue to increase the overall attendance. These vendors have to make money. They're all doing that so far, and each year has seen a decent sales increase. But I have to be cautious here - add one too many and suddenly the show isn't profitable enough for any of them. For 2007, I'll probably add just one additional retail sales vendor. Don't worry, there's plenty of "stuff" for you to see. (And most dealers report that their presence in Charlotte has resulted in many new customers who are still buying from them a year or more later - residual sales after the show eventually outstrip the sales made on the show floor.
Manufacturers are another story. I'll add all that want to come on board. We have vendors there selling most all the major brands. More blank and specialty rod building component vendors need to be taking advantage of this event, in order to help their vendors there are the show. I often hear manufacturers say that they can't make any money at these things because they don't sell to the public. That's not the proper way to look at these things - the vendors there are selling the manufacturers' products. The manufacturers do indeed sell at these shows - in the increased sales their dealers see as a result of the manufacturer being on hand to demo and display their products.
At any rate, I'm in the middle of negotiations on several things. It would be helpful to know just how important a onsite hotel is for many of you guys. I know most of you come in from a ways off, but don't really have a handle on how many drive and how many fly in. If you have a car, then driving from a hotel to the show site, (a couple miles) isn't a big deal. But if you fly, then I worry about folks having to spend money to rent a car. Maybe this is a big deal, maybe it isn't. I just try to look at things from the perspective of the attendees. If you have comments on this, please email them to me directly at
rodmaker@earthlink.net.
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