Editor’s Note: This teaser article is part of Who’s on Your Crew, a three-part special publication from Exhibit City News. Part three of this publication will examine the future of the I&D industry. It will be published in the May edition of ECN.
For the last several months, we have been tracking the progression of tradeshow industry labor, from its beginnings in retail displays and the major initiatives taken by Chicago’s livestock industry into the brand new world that was created by the advent of Exhibit Appointed Contractors (EACs).
Our second installment traced the recent history of both the labor segment and the shows themselves, now inextricably intertwined. We charted the unbridled success of big shows and the free spending of the 90s through the aftermath of 9/11 when the industry began to recover, only to run on a collision course with the Great Recession, as many now call it, of 2008.
And now, in the last piece of the I&D story, while the industry, according to recent CEIR statistics, has seemed to be taking an uptick,
other forces have come into play.
As a result of the financial scandals that rocked the reputations and the very existence of several corporate giants, the word ‘transparency’ entered the lexicon of financial negotiations and vendor selection and transactions. In the wake of these scandals, Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or SOX, which set standards for all U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms. SOX was enacted as a comeback to several large corporate and accounting scandals, including Enron, Tyco International, Arthur Anderson, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom.
As ‘transparency’ became the mandate, purchasing and procurement departments began to get more involved in vendor negotiations for tradeshows. Once the province of the exhibit manager or marketing department, corporate oversight was interpreted to mean that finance departments should become directly involved in vendor selection decisions.
Yet among corporate exhibit managers whose job performance is tied to upholding transparency mandates, there is new unrest. Particularly during the current recession, as exhibit managers receive less money to fund show participation and share more of the marketing budgets with digital and online initiatives, they are asking, “Where is the money going?” To put it quite simply, there are the budgeted costs, and then there are the final bills. Too often the discrepancy is baffling and certainly unacceptable. And every segment of the industry is being pulled into answering this question.
Labor is a big part of this discussion, and for so many years, it has been part of the mystery that centers on show costs. Union bashing by the unschooled is considered the thing to do on the show floor and off. Many people involved in the exhibiting process don’t understand the issues and their complexities, and they choose to wallop the nearest target.
As the landscape of the tradeshow industry changes in the U.S., as exhibitors opt for lighter properties, fewer giveaways, and cancelling shows when the money runs out, the I&D segment will be profoundly affected. The new conversation has to be of interest to everyone who has a stake in the outcome.
