Powder Coated Tough - Spring 2008 - (Page 16) Breaking News the reduction in finishing personnel you have little flexibility in sending groups of people to shows. So the companies that are involved can’t afford to have the one engineer leave for two or three days to attend a show. It is important that we keep in mind our potential pool that can attend the shows is shrinking. Unfortunately this is the situation that we are facing. An additional part of the discussions involves the question of if there really is enough new things drawing people to a show every year. That continues to be a question mark, and I think that also influences the number of people attending as well. It is the responsibility of the exhibiting companies and industry organizations to create excitement in shows. nical conference participation—these sorts of things. We have looked at other industries’ trends specific around physical trade shows. We’ve taken surveys—multiple surveys—to get input from attendees and exhibitors, about their desires and how they would like to see shows/events in the future. Based on that analysis, we have determined that an annual show or event is necessary to continue to assist both PCI’s and CCAI’s membership as a means to promote and advertise their products and services. Trostle: I think that PCI and CCAI both have made a real effort to communicate with their members to find out what is important regarding the shows. Do the members of both organizations want to see a show every year? If it’s going to be every year, what is it going to look like? If you are not going to do a show, what other kind of potential events do you want to see? I think different people have ideas and the important thing is to bring together as many people from the industry and sit down to discuss how we can maximize the investment that each member puts into a show. This question about feedback is very critical as we look forward. What do the members of the organization want to see in shows? These are the discussions that need to take place. Tell me about the alliance between PCI & CCAI. Houston: We’re very excited about this alliance. We are excited for a few reasons. First of all we believe that the two organizations have two similar but different missions. PCI’s mission is to promote powder coating and CCAI’s mission is to educate the coating industry. In short, there’s really a great synergy in coming together to create a show strategy. Our intent was to have a long-term show strategy but not one that just went on forever. However I would not be surprised if—this goes beyond 2013. Our interest is to show the marketplace that there is a long-term strategy in place for planning purposes. Through PCI’s evaluation of the market, looking at the shows in general, historical data points , and the industrial market at large, we felt the need to come up with a plan to creating an exciting atmosphere around physical tradeshows, creating more interest and really trying to drive our mission of promoting powder coating. We determined that it would be best for us to create an alliance with a partner who appreciates this vision and who could help us tap into more of the marketplace. We had found a great partnership with CCAI historically, as a cosponsor of many of our shows, and decided it would be a great alliance to use the knowledge and experience of CCAI, along with the experience and show hosting of PCI, to collaborate on a What feedback from the industry has been taken into account in your planning for this alliance? Houston: We’ve done a couple of things. Obviously, we’ve analyzed show data, attendees, exhibit space sold, tech- Source: PCI Show Data 16 Powder Coated Tough
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