Posted by

Barry Siskind

Community Manager

 The New York Times has a blog. A recent posting that caught my eye was titled, Are Trade Shows a waste of Time. The author had just returned from an international framing show in Italy and just completed a similar show in Las Vegas.

http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/are-trade-shows-a-waste-of-time/?sudsredirect=true

 His complaint was that traffic in both fairs was down and therefore so was business. The good news is that this author was savvy enough to take advantage of the education opportunities as well as some serious networking.

 Yet, for a small business to justify the cost of exhibiting that isn’t quite enough. I am sure that small and medium size businesses throughout the world are wrestling with the same issue – is it worth it.

 While we as an industry do our best to convince them that they can achieve a positive return on investment and that while the numbers of visitors is down the quality of those who attend is up, maybe that isn’t quite enough.

 What are you doing to promote the benefits of exhibiting to our exhibitors?