The early death of the virtual shows?

My business model consists of participation in shows.? I help small manufacturers of lifestyle products to penetrate the US retail market through participation in these events.

During COVID days there was freeze in world of trade shows.? Few of those shows still never came back. Some shows returned, after most COVID restrictions waved, yet in different versions and size.

Virtual shows appeared to be suitable alternative to the temporary loss of trade shows’ social gathering.? They came in fast.? Almost instantly, more and more trade shows “went virtual”.? An event that was based on personal interaction became technologically oriented.??

Even though I didn’t gather sufficient data, I was still able to get feedback from colleagues who have chosen to participate in those events.??

All of them, almost unanimously, shared their feeling about these events with the following items in criticism are:

• Ineffective presentation of products due to loss of feel and touch aspect.
• Inability to demonstrate product mechanism, functioning and alike.
• Insufficient condition of presentation (for many products who have significant effect, two-dimensional presentation does harmful to effective presentation compared with real time presentation with three-dimensional exposure).
• Lack of vibe and positive atmosphere.
• Loss of attention by the presenter due to lack of traffic – sitting all alone in your office waiting to “passing by traffic” to “pop in” your screen defined by many of them: too boring.

Most of them are salespeople and their point of view is related to their profession.?

The common understanding though is that trade shows in general are in decline phase.

However, there are some thoughts that predict that virtual shows will be the future and slowly will push the traditional trade shows out of the market.??

Even though I tend to agree with this direction, to my best assessment, virtual shows will lead to decline in the traditional mass market shows, first.? Trade shows that are more sales driven like order writing shows, might still survive longer after the decline of “their big sisters”.? Shows that are aim at professional markets will still survive given that their structure and agenda include unreplaceable interpersonal interaction like lectures and workshops.

I based my understanding and feeling, through my experience.? My business model consists of participation in shows (order writing shows to independent retail stores).? Shows during post COVID days returned close to normal relatively aggressively.? Buying motivation was at its peak.? Spending was close to the same level we experienced during Pre COVID days.??

Markets that their members are either have special expertise or smaller buying power will need events such as trade shows to sustain.? Special expertise always require continuous education and events that are based on social interaction and exchange of ideas and knowledge, are yet to be replaceable by technology.? Small business that dealing with retail or service, have limited buying power and therefore shows are still amongst their best product sourcing option.

Small retail businesses in the US, account of about 40% of total sales while the rest is shared between online and big box retail stores (hint:? big box retailers are still having the largest market share…).

Virtual shows will have greater market share in the long term.? Their appearance was a result of an urgency and not a planned change in the market.? It just gave us a taste of who it might be.? Few of us (like me), didn’t like that taste.? Thus, let’s realize what sooner or later we will be able to sit at our office barefoot with virtual background behind us and still have a great and successful show.

Should the US retail market, is your next destination and you would like to learn more about the trade shows as effective vehicle to penetrate this market.? Please click on the button below.