AIMExpo success forces date and city change for Dealer Expo
The all new AIMExpo at Orlando,
Florida took place to widespread acclaim (especially
for a first year event) in Orlando, Florida
in October.
With it, the latest turn in the never-ending cycle of change
in the domestic US
powersports industry expo scene has played out and further shaped the show
landscape.
That is a landscape that was radically altered with the
announcement of the new show project two years ago, an announcement that sent
shockwaves and panic through Advanstar Inc, the company that has hitherto owned
and operated the ‘Indy’ Dealer Expo – historically regarded as by far the
leading mainstream motorcycle industry trade event in the United
States.
That panic saw Advanstar respond with a confusing series of
different announcements about how it would seek to protect its event from the
impact that AIMExpo appeared likely to have, those announcements including
radical revision of the event’s formula and changes in date as well, at one
stage, as a plan to actually hold it twice in one year.
That plan for Dealer Expo (and other plans besides), have
come to nothing and as their latest plans are to move Dealer Expo to the
notoriously expensive, rigidly unionised and exhibitor-unfriendly embrace of
Chicago’s McCormick Place exhibition centre.
What is more, having seen AIMExpo defy Advanstar’s historic insistence
that ‘sun-belt’ venues and Fall/Autumn timings were death for the
business-focus of trade shows, Advanstar have decided to move Dealer Expo from
mid-February to early December each year, and take it to just about the coldest
and least reliable major city expo environment of them all.
This first AIMExpo attracted some 400 plus exhibitors,
including the first OEs and reports suggests that while the organisers would be
well-advised to reconsider the five day duration of the event and will clearly
need to embrace initiatives to boost both dealer and consumer attendance, the
general reaction to the concept and the first year is positive, with the
majority of exhibitors appearing to indicate that they will re-book for 2014.
Meanwhile, Dealer Expo, which is slated for December 5th-7th 2014
will have gone for nearly two years since the last and much criticised event in
Indianapolis in 2013. With domestic
US industry
reaction to their plan being almost universally hostile so far, the widespread scuttlebutt
is that if AIMExpo can show that it is building on its first year by October
next year then the chances of dealer expo taking place at all must be in the
balance.
