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INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | JULY 28, 2000 FACTORY DAYS By Lisa Bergson No Business Like Trade-Show Business They're expensive and hard work, but you can't beat 'em for meeting and greeting — and closing some deals
 Some predict that the Internet will kill trade shows. Would that it were true. On the flight home from SEMICON West, the semiconductor industry's annual blowout in San Francisco, my feet and back hurt, and I'm too tired to sleep after three days of exhibiting, kibitzing, and carousing. As much as anyone, I resent the human toll and the financial cost of trade shows. But I'm sure they'll never die, and I'll tell you why.These time-honored industry ritual provide: Barometers of success. Last year we couldn't afford to exhibit at SEMICON, organized by Semiconductor Equipment & Materials International. The Asian financial crisis and the downturn in the semiconductor industry worldwide walloped my $5 million analytical-equipment company, which specializes in moisture analyzers for ultrahigh-purity gases. As is their wont, the show's organizers put us on the bottom of the waiting list for booths in 2000. The competition spread rumors that MEECO was "roadkill." Exhibiting is a sign of health. The bigger and more elaborate your booth, the greater your commitment to the industry. At SEMICON, major companies like Applied Materials and LAM create entire multimedia, multipurpose facilities that dominate precious floor space. It's like Disney World for adults, who quickly regress into greedy children, gobbling up booth candy and trolling for giveaways they claim are just for their kids. (I always offer color-coordinated candy, usually multicolored licorice, at our booth.) Showcases for new products. In our industry, a product's market introduction is typically traced to the trade show where it first appeared. This year, word that we finally made the cut for a booth at SEMICON West came just weeks before the show. From there it was a slapdash effort, especially since we were determined to debut our new laser-based analyzer, the MTO-1000. The day before the show, we still had to scurry to get the booth set up. Union labor is mandatory at the Moscone Convention Center, and Alice, our skinny, cheerful union worker, warned us to finish before her noon lunch hour. Then, imagine my horror when we rolled the display unit out of its wooden crate only to find no product name on the MTO-1000 faceplate. From the cavernous convention center floor, I called Calvin Krusen, our director of engineering. "It never occurred to me," he said. Turns out it didn't occur to our customers either, who were far too interested in the technology and its features to notice whether the device had a name. (Engineers!) There we were, first to market, with our new Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy-Based Analyzer. What a comeback! Watering holes for decision-makers. Trade shows don't come cheap. On average, we spend $16,000 each for roughly six major shows a year. That includes travel and entertainment for employees attending and entertainment for guests. But it only takes one serendipitous encounter or valuable lead for a show to pay for itself. At SEMICON Europa two years ago, I was introduced to a powerful global buyer for a major multinational in our market. Unreachable by phone, fax, or Internet (we tried, believe me), this man had a bad experience with one of our units a decade ago. He was leaning toward the competition until our meeting prompted a reevaluation of our technology and an intensive field test. Today, MEECO is this company's preferred vendor. Crossroads for international trade. Where else would a small company have such an opportunity to convene with customers and independent sales reps from around the world? One night during Semicon, we hosted a dinner for our Singaporean reps. They had offered to set up a service center for MEECO on their own or as a joint venture with us. Given our large installed base in Asia, we decided it makes more sense financially and commercially to do it on our own. Worried about the reps' reaction to this seeming rebuff, my vice-president for sales, Tom Mallon, and I rehearsed our position in advance. "Customers will have more respect for MEECO if we take full responsibility for our products," went my pitch. I asked for their support to make it a win-win. "Singapore is very friendly to business," responded H.T. Tan, the chairman of Quest Pte. Ltd. He went on to outline what we need to do to set up in Singapore and how his company will help. Meeting in person made all the difference in averting an international fiasco. Team-building experiences. A test of ingenuity, endurance, teamwork, and organization, trade shows are great for bonding. Over three days, the four of us held early-morning breakfast meetings where we presented to our national and international sales reps in for the show. We attended SEMI standards meetings and market updates. We traversed the vast exhibit halls, checking out competitors, visiting customers, and seeing suppliers. We hosted fancy dinners for reps and customers. And we stood for long -- very long -- hours on a barely padded cement floor. When the show ended, we were there for more than four hours, waiting for the union to unload the giant crate for our booth. (This time, I learned about these new collapsible booths that instantly expand like giant umbrellas and contract into small, portable enclosures. No more waiting around to unpack and repack the exhibit. No more Alice. It's in next year's budget.) Tribal gatherings. It's a bonding experience not just for my employees but for the community we call our marketplace. That's the value of trade shows, I think, as I rough out this column before succumbing to the inflight Madonna movie. There's no substitute for the press of the flesh, the look in your competitor's eye, the energy when humans gather. Ironically, the advent of the Internet actually puts a premium on face-to-face interactions. "Human touch will become even more important in the Internet Age," noted Walter Buckley, president and CEO of Internet Capital Group, a venture-capital fund, at a recent forum on e-business in Philadelphia. Please join me back here in two weeks, and I'll tell you about our recent run-in with white-collar crime at MEECO. Is there justice when business is the victim?  Before joining MEECO in 1983, Lisa Bergson worked as a business journalist at Business Week and freelanced for many business publications. She received a Masters in Journalism from New York University and received Columbia University's Walter Bagehot Fellowship for economics and business journalism. You can visit her company's web site at www.meeco.com, or contact her at  | | |
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