Comdex Operators File for Bankruptcy

VileScum writes "According to this article in The Australian, Los Angeles-based Key3Media Group, the company operating the giant Comdex trade show, filed for protection from its creditors yesterday in the United States Bankruptcy Court. Does this mean I have to start buying cloths again instead of getting them at trade shows?" Also see a story in The New York Times. Concerns of bankruptcy were voiced last November.

Comments

unsurprising

[Boromir son of Faram]

Comdex has been in steady decline for a few years. I don't think anyone's exactly floored by this announcement, which is just ceiling the fate we all saw coming as the trade show has become increasingly walled in.

Then we have trade shows like LinuxWorld that have trouble selling enough booths to cover their costs. I don't think this is anything to be upset over. The Internet is to some extent doing away with the need for meatspace trade shows, and in these lean times it's hardly shocking that businesses don't want to throw away money on a trade show booth that could be spent in their web presence with many times the return on investment.

So, the Comdex bankrupty filing has been found, as legend foretold.

Re:unsurprising

[RecoveredMarketroid]

Having worked in the marketing department of a company that traditionally exhibited at Comdex, I'd absolutely agree that the writing has been on the wall for a long time. But I would note that it started long before the ecomonic downturn.

The decline in exhibitor interest was precipitated by a deterioration in the quality of attendees. We used to see a lot of real prospective B2B customers, people who were knowledgeable. Over time, COMDEX seemed to reduce the 'admission requirements' to increase revenue; over time, these customers were mostly replaced by consumer tire-kickers and people looking to drop off resumes.

I'm not knocking comsumers (or job seekers!), but the reality is that most of the exhibitors didn't survive on consumer sales...

Corporate accountability

[Sonicboom]

With all the failed companies (Enron, etc..) and all of the "dot-bombs", I can't help to ask myself who's to take responsibility?

Today's corporate leaders are the "Robber Barons" of the late 19th century. Unfortunately (*in the USA*) the Government doesn't seem to watch/regulate corporations, nor do they seem to care. The end result is the rich getting richer, and the average working guys like you and I are getting screwed.

Oh - Don't worry - some other company will spring up and take over Comdex... or they'll re-create it under a different name.

How not to survive a downturn

[FunWithHeadlines]

From the NY Times article, two quotes that explain it all:

"Crucial exhibitors began dropping out, some going out of business themselves, and others scaled back the elaborate booths that had been a staple of the dot-com era. And as Key3Media's business began looking tenuous this fall, some exhibitors became reluctant to commit to shows even six months away."

Business cycles go up and down, and the smart business will prepare for these down cycles. After all, you cannnot assume that good times will continue indefinitely. There does come a time when companies will hesitate to spend the money to exhibit. Did Key3Media plan accordingly?

" Key3 Media -- built up in the late 1990's as the technology boom was reaching its crest -- around the same time accumulated substantial debt, making it especially difficult to operate when the downturn in technology became sustained."

Oops. Yet another victim of boom mentality. It seems they jumped in with both feet when the feeding was good, did the usual VC thinking of growth, growth, growth at the expense of debt, debt, debt, and now find themselves hurting when the inevitable down cycle occurs.

Comdex provided me with a lot of fun memories. I hope it continues just so we have a place to go poke buttons and admire large screens in person. But it helps when the owners of the show (no longer Shelley Adelson) are focused on the show, not soley on the bottom line and growth for growth's sake.

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Re:Conventions are doomed anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Preach it, brother. And in a few years when trade shows in general are decimated, I bet we'll see these same unions whine about the unfairness of it all and demanding a taxpayer handout in the billions, oblivious to the economic ecology they are gleefully slaughtering now. You can shear a sheep for many seasons, but you can only slaughter it once. The unions are slaughtering the sheep that enable them to make a living.

The new ways of connecting companies to their clients which are proliferating through the Net (remember Reed's Law) are saying to these unions: your costs are too high for your clients, adapt or die.

Re:Comdex Memories

[Deagol]

Well, because marketing, while it may seem silly and unimportant to you, is what makes companies sell shit.

Funny. I thought that having a good product, especially one that people use and want, caused people to buy shit.

Ah... there's the problem (or at least I consider it a problem). Many seem to believe that the economy should be push-driven (companies "sell shit") versus a pull-driven one (people "buy shit").

I've never understood goofy multi-million dollar superbowl adverts, trade shows, cold-calls, door-to-door salemen, pop-ups, or even everyday radio/tv commercials.

Hell, if I want to buy a car, I'm gonna research what's out there. You can be damned sure I'm not going to let a 30-second glossy TV ad influense a $25,000 purchase. That scales down to things as cheap as paper towels and tooth paste.

I realize that the big model is to make people believe thay want crap they don't need, whether that crap is quality or not (more often not). Here's a thought: make quality products that fill a real need (give me better reception on my cell phone, not a dazzling array of colored faceplates for the phone) and people will seek you out. In other words, "Build it, and they will come."

I once worked for a small software firm which produced a niche point-of-sale system. I talked with several of the sales droids there. They honestly believed that without Sales (that is, the department, not actual cash sales) that the world would collapse into economic ruin. I always took the opposing view, but they'd hear none of it.

It's one thing to have a passive presense to have your name in circulation (phone book entry, web page, small ads in the back of trade rags, etc.), but to devote so much money to something as wasteful as salesmen and advertising seems silly to me.

Maybe I'm just a more demanding "consumer" than most, but most everything I buy is based on my own opinion, not advertising.

Sometimes, I've decided to avoid brands solely because of how stupid the commercials are. May Utahns out there who have seen or heard the Totally Awesome Computers ads are sure to agree with me.

And yes, I realize that I just poked a hole into my argument in that past paragraph. That counterpoint to anti-advertising is "brand recognition" -- the philosophy that if you remember a brand (even in a negative way), the advert has done its job. Rubbish.

Re:Conventions are doomed anyway

[Zeinfeld]

Preach it, brother. And in a few years when trade shows in general are decimated, I bet we'll see these same unions whine about the unfairness of it all and demanding a taxpayer handout in the billions,

That is utter crap. It isn't Union labor that is responsible for the conference hall charging $20/day for an $8 chair. The conference hall charges have nothing at all to do with what they pay their employees, they are simply gouging on the part of the conference hall operators.

If you have a meeting in a hotel the hotel will charge you $20 a piece for an 'executive meeting maker', that is a 5"x7" pad of 10 sheets of cheap paper with the hotel logo crudely printed on it and a cheap pen which together cost perhaps $5 cents. Add in another 5 cents worth of hard boiled sweets and thats it.

Of course it is much easier to blather on about evil unions. Predjudice is sooo much easier than thinking for yourself.