(Pictured) Co-location was a huge boon for the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show and the International Builders' Show.
Trade-show organizers believe there's strength in numbers. An impressive 44 percent are either very or somewhat likely to begin co-locating a show with another within the next three years, according to a survey of more than 200 C-level event producers. That same study, the Exhibition and Convention Executives Forum Pulse, conducted last year, also found that nearly half of respondents (48 percent) were very or somewhat likely to continue their current co-location arrangements.
"It's imperative for the modern show producer to add value and to evolve their event on an annual basis," says Sam Lippman, president and founder of trade-show consultancy Lippman Connects, which produces the Exhibition and Convention Executives Forum. "Co-location is one way of doing that. Not only are the major exhibitors saving money, but you're providing a brand new set of solutions to your attendees, to your members."
Seizing an opportunity
In some cases, co-location relationships are born from economic necessity.
The Kitchen & Bath Industry Show and the International Builders' Show are two trade events with a long history. Each has been an essential yearly event for the trade associations that own them -- the National Kitchen & Bath Association and the National Association of Home Builders, respectively -- for more than 50 years. But a few years ago, the outlook was not particularly good for either.
"Serving the residential housing sector was challenging after the market crashed in 2008 and 2009," recalls Brian Pagel, vice president, Kitchen and Bath Group, for Emerald Expositions, the New York City-based trade-show operator that produces KBIS. "As both events really felt the brunt of the meltdown in housing, we started having conversations on how we could drive more value to the marketplace, given what we were up against."
After a thorough analysis of respective audiences and exhibitors, the two organizations realized that their dire circumstances presented an opportunity. "We quickly came to the conclusion that, while there was some crossover in terms of exhibitors, the audience crossover was minimal," says Pagel, who notes that IBS attendees typically are architects and contractors, while the KBIS attendees are designers. "We reached out to some of the larger exhibitors, because we wanted to gauge their level of interest in a co-located event. They all were very supportive."
As a result, Design & Construction Week, the co-located event, was born. Several anchor exhibitors that participated in both shows pushed for it because they would benefit from scale and cost savings. Others jumped at the opportunity to expand their reach. As for the boards of the respective associations, a majority of executives were open to the possibilities.
Exceeding expectations
The inaugural Design & Construction Week debuted in Las Vegas in February 2014. While both associations believed they were on to something, they weren't sure how the market would react. "We exceeded our wildest dreams," says Pagel. "We went from 165,000 square feet of exhibit space for KBIS in May 2013 to a show less than a year later that was wall-bound at 225,000 square feet. Our attendance increased from 13,000 to almost 24,000. And those numbers are just for the KBIS side of the show; it doesn't factor in the attendees who came in on the IBS side."
That year, KBIS was the fastest-growing trade show, attendance-wise, in North America -- by a landslide. It grew eight times faster than the show in second place. And the numbers have continued to climb as the two associations have continued to co-locate. In January, KBIS drew nearly 29,000 attendees to Las Vegas. Overall, Design & Construction Week 2016 -- which included KBIS, the International Builders' Show and the smaller partnering International Window Coverings Expo, International Surface Event and Tile Expo -- brought more than 110,000 attendees to the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The success shows no signs of waning: KBIS 2017 already has confirmed more than 580 exhibitors for 332,000 net square feet of space. The organizations have agreed to co-locate KBIS and IBS through 2020.
Different scales
While the practice of co-locating is relatively popular, it doesn't often happen on the scale of the KBIS/IBS collaboration. "'Co-location' can mean anything from 'I've got excess space, so I'm going bring on another show and just charge them rental' to joint ventures that include booth sales and everything else," says Lew Shomer, former executive director of the Society of Independent Show Organizers. Often, the arrangements tend to be informal.
Shomer currently is chairman of the Abilities Expo, a series of events about products and services for the disability community. "When we're at a convention center, we always ask who else is going to be there," he says. "If we know in advance, we call the organizer and offer to promote their event, and they can in turn promote ours. As long as the events are complementary, that happens."
One of Shomer's shows two years ago took place concurrently with the Pri-Med East Annual Conference in Boston. "Their show is primarily for nurses and doctors; ours is primarily for therapists and people with disabilities," he says. "It wasn't planned far in advance, but we were able to get a significant number of their people to come down to our show because of the interest in the technology and helping people with disabilities. Our audience wouldn't necessarily fit into Pri-Med's profile, but the Pri-Med profile certainly fits ours."
The groups exchanged signage to cross-promote on-site, and attendees with Pri-Med badges were welcomed into the Abilities Expo. While the ad-hoc nature of that agreement might not constitute a true co-location, potential benefits are similar -- to expand reach and increase attendance, specifically. No data was officially collected in that case from the Pri-Med attendees who crossed over, but contact information was exchanged with exhibitors, and relationships were born.
Inviting the Public to Play
"There is so much blue ocean around experiential events, around that place between B-to-B and B-to-C," says Greg Topalian co-founder of events company LeftField Media LLC. "For the most part, B-to-B shows are not open to the public; they're ignoring that part of the market. We believe that there is opportunity in that space."
Topalian, formerly a senior vice president at Reed Exhibitions, has been thinking along these lines since he founded New York Comic Con in 2006. Much of what he and his colleagues are now doing at LeftField involves creating something new at an existing show -- expansion by way of co-location.
Take, for instance, Play Fair, which debuted in February in New York City's Javits Center, co-located with the Toy Industry Association's North American International Toy Fair. The latter show, now in its 113th year, is a B-to-B extravaganza for the toy industry, the largest such show in the Western Hemisphere. This year it drew more than 30,600 industry professionals, but the public wasn't invited. Play Fair, meanwhile, welcomed families, collectors and the general public -- more than 20,000 people over two days.
"We felt there was a major opportunity to create a family-entertainment 'Con,'" says Topalian. "It's more about toys, games and animation than it is about things kids shouldn't see."
The Toy Industry Association had been thinking the same thing. "We had been wanting to do it for a few years," says Marian Bossard, senior vice president of global events at New York City-based TIA. "There's always pressure on trade shows to go public or have a day that's open to the public. We wanted nothing to do with that for Toy Fair, because we think there's a real place for a B-to-B atmosphere. But we recognized that our members, the toy companies, needed to have some high level of engagement with their end users."
Play Fair, a joint venture between the TIA and LeftField Media, did nothing to change the professional atmosphere of the parent show: Exhibit halls and registration were separate; but it was an opportunity for the exhibitors who already were there for Toy Fair.
"In its debut year, Play Fair was a success beyond all expectations that now provides the basis for a much larger show in the future," says TIA president and CEO Steve Pasierb.
"When you talk to people who have been denied access to Toy Fair since they were young, they have this idea of what Toy Fair is -- this magical place," notes Bossard. "The truth is that it's a very businesslike environment; they probably would have been disappointed if they'd been allowed in. So we decided to make Play Fair like what these people imagined Toy Fair to be. We created that magical place."
Financial challenges
"Where things become complicated," Shomer notes, "is if I'm co-locating with another show that has the same exhibitors. Then you're forcing the exhibitors either to spend twice as much money or to make a decision to exhibit at just one of the two."
The first point can be less of a hurdle, Pagel from KBIS points out, because exhibitors aren't really spending twice as much to exhibit on both show floors. They're saving by shipping materials and building booths in the same venue, at the same time. "We also had exhibitors that booked significantly more exhibit space because the thought was, 'There's a larger marketplace now, I need to really present my brand in a very meaningful way. Instead of being one of 300 exhibitors, I'm now maybe one of 2,000 exhibitors.'"
Lew Shomer, Abilities ExpoThat said, the possibility of a long-time exhibitor at both shows deciding to go with one show floor over the other often kills co-location efforts, says Lew Shomer. "Those issues are generally driven by the sales force. How are they going to split the commission? For a big group, that can be a lot of money."
That was an early talking point between the associations in the preliminary Design & Construction Week talks, says Pagel. They agreed on an approach to ensure there was a level playing field -- a standard revenue-sharing formula based on the exhibitor's past behavior. "We looked at a snapshot of a five-year period," Pagel says, "and we looked at where these exhibitors have participated. Is it one event or the other, or are they committed to both? And we let that dictate how we handled it on the back end to make sure there was equity in revenue. We created a mechanism by which we take some of the emotion out of it, which is a key part of convention planning. You make sure things don't fall apart by addressing them in black-and-white transparency."
Creating harmony
To reach such agreements, open, candid discussions among organizers is essential. It's likewise crucial that the organizations share common goals, which was particularly evident in the approach to Design & Construction Week exhibitor sharing.
"From our perspective," says Pagel, "we had to look at not necessarily whether it was in the best interest of who's on my floor vs. who's on their floor, but what's appropriate based on the exhibitor's market strategy. It's all about what's in the best interest for that brand. If their core objective in 2016 is to reach more of a builders' market, then certainly as a partner it's my responsibility to try to help them do that. Conversely, if someone wants to be in front of designers, they'll be able to do that on our show floor."
History shows, however, that such harmonious goals are easier expressed than accomplished. "I would guess that for every successful co-location, there are probably five others that started down the path and at some point derailed," says show organizer and consultant Sam Lippman. And the friction isn't necessarily the result of complicated revenue-sharing agreements. "I say this only slightly tongue in cheek, but the derailment could be as simple as the fact there's only one presidential suite in the headquarters hotel, and they can't decide which association's president would get that suite.
"A show with a long history is like an aircraft carrier," Lippman adds. "It has momentum, it has its own culture. So the actual business could be easily identifiable, the advantages outweighing the disadvantages. But if the culture is not a good fit, if the personalities are not a good fit, then the co-location doesn't happen successfully."
"You have to go into it with an open mind," Pagel advises. "There are certain things that you don't want to give up -- things critical to the fabric of your event or organization. But I think both organizations can come to the table and determine where they have shared interests. Many organizations that try this get bogged down on where they disagree, rather than where they agree."