the September 2008 Issue in PDF Format - Trade Show Executive

News
Continued from page 6
AEM Targets Global
Audience for New
Farm Show
By Hil Anderson, senior editor
Milwaukee, WI – The Association of
Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) will
launch an ambitious new agriculture
trade show in 2010 that will seek out an
international audience and aim to become
a mid-Winter hub of corporate meetings
and other activities for the industry.
The AG CONNECT Expo will debut
January 12-15, 2010 at the Orange County
Convention Center in Orlando, FL. The
AEM has a goal of 250,000 net square
feet of exhibit space and around 20,000
attendees and 700 exhibitors from a wide
base of farmers and companies in the
agriculture sector.
The event will be held again in 2011
and then switch to a biennial schedule
that better aligns with other major
international farm shows.
While many U.S. farm shows tend
to be regional in nature and are aimed
at more of a consumer-show audience,
AG CONNECT Expo targets major
growers along with big-ticket equipment
manufacturers and producers of seeds,
fertilizers and other agricultural inputs.
The show also will include a robust
educational component. “When
we worked with focus groups we
learned people wanted the educational
component, but didn’t want to be stuck
sitting in a 300-seat auditorium listening
to lectures. They wanted the opportunity
to interface with the speakers and with
their peer group,” Charlie O’Brien, AEM’s
vice president of agricultural services,
told Trade Show Executive.
O’Brien said that while the First
Quarter of the year was generally the
high season for agricultural meetings, the
AEM anticipated its show would become
a must-attend event that would draw
smaller summits, association meetings
and corporate gatherings into its orbit.
“The intent is to make this a gathering
place for agriculture,” O’Brien said. “As
we found on the construction side of the
business, people like to take advantage
of a ‘gathering place’ and have strategic
meetings. Everyone is so busy these days,
they want to take advantage of their
people being in the same place at the
same time,” he added.
The added attraction of Florida in
the Winter should also be an enticement
for attendees. While golf courses and
amusement parks spring to mind, the
Sunshine State has other draws for the
farm crowd. “Florida has pretty deep
roots in agriculture,” O’Brien said. “There
are 280 different crops that are grown
very close to Orlando, so we expect to
extend out from the actual trade show
and give people some opportunities to
see some of the agriculture in Florida as
well.”
Reach Charlie O’Brien at (414) 298-
4157 or cobrien@aem.org
Questex Adds
SpaTrade to Beauty
Group Portfolio
By Hil Anderson, senior editor
Newton, MA - Questex Media Group, Inc.
heated up its position in the booming
spa industry by acquiring SpaTrade,
organizers of the SpaExec networking
events and two industry portals.
SpaTrade will be added to Questex’s
Beauty Industry Group portfolio which
includes the International Beauty Shows,
the International Esthetics, Cosmetics & Spa
Conferences (IECSC) and the SPATEC
appointment events.
Questex has built a portfolio that
also includes American Spa and American
Salon magazines to compliment its
events. SpaTrade has two industry Web
portals with 15,000 registered members
representing spa owners, operators,
practitioners, and suppliers from 94
countries.
Terms of the acquisition were not
revealed in the August 20 announcement.
Questex President & CEO Kerry Gumas
stated that Nancy Griffin, the founder
and president of SpaTrade, would
continue to run the company.
SpaTrade was launched in 2000, in
time to catch a developing bull market in
the spa industry. A study releasd in May at
the 2008 Global Spa Summit in New York
estimated the worldwide spa industrty was
valued at $250 billion in 2007, including
core revenues of $60.3 billion.
The spa marketing company
SpaFinder, Inc. issued a survey of travel
agents on August 19 in which 58%
expected bookings for spa visits to
continue to grow in 2008 despite the weak
economy. The survey concluded that
spa access was the top consideration for
travelers looking for resort options, and
that the client demographic was shifting
from Baby Boomers to the 35-to-45-yearold
age bracket.
Reach Kerry Gumas at (617) 219-8300
or kgumas@questex.com; Nancy Griffin
at (707) 773-0382 or nancy@spatrade.
com
Urban Expositions
Acquires Boston Gift
Show from GLM
By Hil Anderson, senior editor
Boston, MA – The divestiture of events by
dmg world media continued into August
with the announcement that the venerable
Boston Gift Show had been acquired by
Urban Expositions.
Terms of the transaction between
Urban Expositions and GLM, a division
of dmg, were not revealed, although the
deal announced August 1 took effect
immediately.
The 161st annual Boston Gift Show
will take place March 28-31, 2009 at the
Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
The event is expected to draw roughly
500 exhibitors and 7,000 attendees. The
2008 show had an exhibit area of 59,625
net square feet according to dmg.
The announcement came a week after
the blockbuster sale of the dmg portfolio
of 38 home shows in the U.S. and
Canada to Marketplace Events, a newly
created division of Stephens Capital
Partners LLC, an affiliate of the Arkansas
investment banking firm Stephens Inc.
The shows had been on the block since
last Fall.
Urban Expositions was founded in
the Atlanta area in 1995 and organizes gift
shows in Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Orlando
and other cities. It also runs the National
Continued on page 10
8 September 2008 Trade Show Executive www.TradeShowExecutive.com