My third trip and it just gets better and better. I was really impressed with the show this year. Very classy and tons of people. Hats off to the speakers and cameras in the seminars this year.

Now a question, it sure looks like the show keeps getting bigger every year. I wonder how much can it grow? I think you could get more booths in the hall but how many more people? Or is that even something to worry over? I'm all for more people the more the merrier, but at some point things would be so jammed that you wouldn't be able to get to any of the booths. Not complaining, just wondering what lies ahead for the growth of this great event and how it will be handled.

Three years and you still haven't stopped by to say hello. I'm offended.

I have no idea how much more growth we'll experience, but I never expected we would be able to sustain the rate of growth we saw the first two years. You can't keep doubling the numbers each year. At some point you top out and I think we're very close to doing that at this point, unless the overall craft were to experience a sudden surge in growth. We had around 500 the first year, 900 or 1000 the second and about 1400 last year. This year about 1500. So that's nearly double between the first and second years, about 30% increase between the second and third years and around 10% growth this year. By my thinking, any increase next year will be less than 10%. We're approaching the limit of how many rod builders you can draw to such a thing. But that's okay, it's still a rather huge show by rod building standards.

With over 1500 rod builders on board this year, we have an event that is large enough for everyone involved. We should be able to maintain this for some time to come. If we want more people, then we still have a lot of potential in terms of general interest fishermen. We have the room (another 40,000 square feet across the atrium area) and could accommodate quite a bit more in the way of booths and seminars, if we want.

As far as what we'll do next year in terms of encouraging growth among the general interest fishing public remains to be decided.


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I may be wrong but I would think that every general interest fisherman that could be attracted to the show is either a potential rodbuilder and/or a possible purchaser of a custom rod. Thinking along those lines, even though many of them will not be spending money on blanks/components at the show, they could still acount for residual sales by buying custom rods (the builders will have to purchase the materials). I would think that any exposure of custom rods to the public would ultimately be good for the craft and the industry.

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

That's how we feel and is what we're looking at. We had quite a few general interest fishermen on board this year and will likely have more next year. What we intend to do to attract more is something we're still discussing. It could be more advertising, or it could be an add-on event in the opposite hall.

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Understood. Billy you and I talked for ten minutes either last year or the year before, I can't remember which. My wife was with me. You are the one with the weird manchu looking beard thing going on aren't you? I didn't buy a book and didn't spend much time because I don't do much in the way of cross wraps and your booth was covered up on Saturday. I still didn't get around to everything and we had to go on Sunday at noon. That was why I wondered about growth. If many more people start showing up nobody will be able to get to the booths they want to see on Saturday.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2007 10:37PM by Shawn Moore.

If our biggest problem is having a large crowd on hand, I'll take it. Better that the booths be busy than that the vendors all stand around with nothing to do.

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Just thinking out loud, but I think that the crowd was down some since it was competing with NASCAR. I saw a lot of folks headed for Florida. Some of them would surely have come if there was no competition from car racing. I never realized how big NASCAR is on the eastern seaboard. You might try to wedge the show in between big races next year.
My next thought was "how far will a non-builder go to come to the show?" I would think it is less than 100 miles. If that is true, you know what the size of your audience could be. It is only a small percentage of the people who live in that zone. You will get a steady increase in builders but any real growth will come from the non-builders. Did you get a comparison of what % of the 1500 were non-builders? Would be interesting to see the stats on that split for the last couple of years.
Too bad we dont have it in Houston. It would go over like gangbusters at the Houston or Dallas Boat Shows where you get 250,000 to 350,000 people at the 10 days show. Even the Houston Fishing show in June draws about 125,000. That would be spectacular, but like Shawn was alluding to, if it got too big, it might be too crowded.
I personnally missed talking to a couple of folks because there booth was always so busy. I have a new plan for next year.
Dave

No, the crowd was up, again. Sundays are never as good as Saturdays due to the various sporting events you are going to have on every Sunday of the year and the fact that some will take time to go to church or need to get home early for work on Monday. But, the ones there on Sunday were buying. The seminars were still full and we had another great day with good attendance. This is the same pattern as always and the same that you find at all consumer trade shows across the Country.

There were 1500+ rod builders at this years event, and about 300 to 400 non-rod builders were there in addition to those 1500.

You might want to try a rod building show in Houston if you think it's a good market for it. It costs me about $40,000 to put on this one here in High Point. I would assume your cost in Houston would be at least that much, possibly more. Give it a try if you think it would go over well. Do remember that fishermen won't attend a rod building show unless you offer more than just rod building. It's one of the decisions we are working on for what we do here in NC.


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I think you are right that they draw that kind of traffic because they have all kinds of boats, RV's, trailers, camping equip, fishing gear, your name it.
A couple of rod builders have had booths and I understand from one that he has almost 6months of work from the show for he and a partner. You would absolutely have to coat tail on one of the other shows. Even then, I bet it could cost $50,000-100,000. Something to think about though.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think I'll stay put. We just got away from another show and now do a stand-alone event and it was hugely successful. If we add a tag along event, it will be on our terms.

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