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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.
I got a few free shirts at Comdex, but I never saw a booth giving out free cloths
to protect them against an incipient class action lawsuit by inexperienced geeks who were tramautized by picking up "girls" in Las Vegas with large Adam's Apples during the last Comdex.
Oh, but I guess they don't do clothing there, do they. Darn.
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Long ago, before I had a Real Job(tm), I helped out at one of the very first comdexes to earn money to buy crusts of dry bread.
And there were all these people there, totally focused on building a stand that was better than the next stand, which in turn was trying to be better than the next one. Not because all the people loved stands or anything, but just because they'd all talked each other into believing it was really important.
And they totally broke their backs to get their stands ready, they seriously worked 20 hour days to make sure their glossy stand thing worked perfectly and all the brochures and things were in the right place, although none of them actually cared about brochures or stands.
It was this experience(*) that has made me cynical about capitalism in general and trade shows in particular. The sense of 'why not just stop bothering' that I acquired then has stood me good stead ever since
(*)Along with the Tale of the Uneaten Breakfast, but that's another story.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Computer industry will be doomed without the yearly 'Bill Gates COMDEX Keynote' !! ;-)
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.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
Just a few of the typical expenses (daily rates):
- $20 to rent an $8 table.
- $25 for access to an electrical outlet. Don't plug anything in yourself, though, or some teamster will break your fingers.
- $200 for access to a fractional T1 (a very small fraction, most times).
- $10 to rent a $4 chair.
- Want carpet? That'll be $100. Want that carpet unrolled?...
- Bring your own equipment? Too bad, you've got to pay a fee to be allowed to use it.
You haven't dealt with monopolies until you've tried to exhibit at a convention. One company controls all access, labor, and equipment, and you've got no say over how any of it is handled.A manufacturer's money is much better spent sending out press releases and designing an infomative web presence.
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"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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As an IT professional for the past 10 years, I can tell you that my employer has stopped expensing people's trips to Comdex. There's just not enough ROI there to approve the expense anymore. And with companies losing money left and right, extraneous expenses like trips to Comdex are the first things they look at when they want to cut costs.
Once the economy rebounds, either Comdex, or another trade-show will rise from the ashes and become *the* place to be if you're an IT professional. Until then, corporations are more worried about bottom-line and stockholder expectations, than letting Joe IT go on a trip to Vegas...
You know, it's all in how you look at it. Since Comdex was surrounded by clouds of doom, virtually none of my competitors exhibited and thus anyone looking for my type of product had little else to do but to visit my booth. We got a thousand leads during the week, and many of these have turned into sales (we make expensive enterprise stuff, so a handful of orders can pay for the show). Another interesting thing was that due to the shitty economy, it seemed like the only people walking the hall were people who worked for companies who actually needed to buy things. Nobody was sending people to Comdex just for the hell of it. So there were a lot fewer morons asking for shirts, pens, mouse pads, and, of course, nobody asked for a cloth. I do agree, though, with previous posters who rail against paying $25 to rent a $3.99 power strip, and other such atrocities. How someone can go bankrupt doing this is beyond me.