Iwf 2014

[Rich Riddle]

I have never attended an IWF in Atlanta but would like to attend this year. Trying to register as an attendee online is like completing a resume. Do you actually have to fill out all that data just to attend the show? Is it worth it? Anyone attended a show in the past and have plans on returning this year? Any insights you folks have will be appreciated.

[Erik Loza]

Rich, yes it is worth going. IWF more so than AWFS. I haven't seen one of their applications in a while (headquarters just sent me badges; I never personally registered..) but from what I can recall, they don't vet any of that info you are being asked for. In other words, you could just be "Rich's Woodworking", make a bunch of stuff up, and get your badge. I can tell you that a great number of the printed leads I would get from the folks whose badges I scanned when they visited our booth contained gobbledy-goock in terms of info. Bogus email addresses, phone numbers, etc. In other words, IWF didn't seem to check any of that stuff. Hope this helps,

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[Rich Riddle]

Erik,

They have a place for hobbyist so one doesn't need to embellish. I am trying to figure out how to register and not sign up for classes. Will you be attending this year?

[David Weaver]

the hobbyist thing must be new. in 2008 when I went, I left my company name as blank. A lot of the vendors wouldn't talk to me even though a friend and I were down there because he was looking for a slider. The minimax and felder guys were good, the martin guys were also good (martin gave us a huge demo just because). But the timesavers guy actually walked away in the middle of talking to us and never came back, and a couple of the other booths we wanted information from (hardware, etc) looked at our badges and made very bad attempts at pretending someone was calling them away.

Lesson being, put something good and fake about your commercial cabinet shop as a name on your badge.

[Erik Loza]

Rich, not sure yet. But you should go. It really is worth seeing. The "hobbyist" category sounds new. They must be listening to the public.

David, re. a rep walking away from you during a conversation, I would say that is to be somewhat expected at a show like this. I have done it to folks. Reason being that you are under tremendous pressure to close deals at the show. If the booth is busy and I spy a person who seemed like a buyer, who I perhaps spoke to earlier, I am going to drop whatever is going on to speak to that prospect. This is the one down-side to industry-geared shows, as opposed to the hobby-circuit shows. Reps are there to do business and chit-chat is secondary. Just be prepared for that. The upside, however, is that you have a chance to face-to-face with actual product managers and high-level reps as opposed to just "booth folks".

If you are in the mode of just sight-seeing (which is fine) and want chit-chat time with reps, my suggestion is to visit those booths first-thing in the morning, preferbly Weds or Thurs. Friday and Saturday after lunch, little to no chance for chit-chat because that's when the buyers are there, trying to get their best deals from the reps.

Hope this makes sense,

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Erik,

People need to know how pressure filled these trade shows can work.

1978 I was a recently promoted manager in the diagnostic imaging business. I flew into Chicago and my baggage was lost. I was wearing a pair of jeans and a ski sweater. The next morning I went to McCormick Place where the trade show was going occurring . Even though I was wearing a badge identifying me as a employee of another manufacturer, I was able to enter booths of our competitors. One company (who was out of business 2 years later) had a very unique mechanical design on the gantry of their CT scanner and I found it intriguing. That afternoon the airlines delivered my baggage to my hotel. The next morning wearing a 3 piece suit and the same badge, I returned to that particular booth to admire their very unique mechanical design....and the next thing I know, there are security guards telling me I have to leave the booth because I work for a competitor!

Trade shows can be extremely busy and often the staffing is short. Time is valuable.

[David Weaver]

The guy I was with is a well-heeled individual (hobbyist) who went to IWF to find a wide belt sander and a sliding table saw. He actually said to the rep that was there that he intended to buy a wide belt sander, but he didn't know whether he was satisfied with the heft of the portable units after seeing them next to the stationary units. The salesman walked away, but he walked over to an open area to wait, but not to talk to anyone specifically. We could still see him and waited for a while, but he never came back. He made a very bad judgement call if his objective was what you're saying.

Nobody at the minimax booth or felder did that (we were the only ones in the booth when we went to all of the different booths, except there were a couple of folks at martin but they had a huge glom of reps) He ended up getting hooked on martin stuff, because of how well martin treated him despite his comment that he was looking more for something in the $15k range for a slider. I know for sure he never bought a timesavers WB sander. Martin's reps were exceptionally good, despite his comment that he was looking downmarket from martin, one of the reps said "I have plenty of time to give you a demo, anyway, if you'd like to see it". Class move.

I've never been to a hobby-circuit show, and never will. I've gone luddite and have no interest in most of the stuff that's at those shows.

[David Weaver]

Erik,

People need to know how pressure filled these trade shows can work.



One would think when you're a sales rep and a person is telling you they are interested in either ___ or ___ in your booth, that you wouldn't walk away to an open area with no immediate customers within two minutes.

[Erik Loza]

I hear you, David. Obviously, I was not there so please take my remarks in a relativist sort of way. As Ken pointed out, many folks have never seen the other side of the coin. That is not to say their feelings aren't important, just that the big shows are Superbowl-type pressure. At the hobby shows, if you didn't sell much (which became the norm after 2006...), oh well, you could just make that up during the rest of the year. At IWF or AWFS, the booth (our booth, anyhow...) costs upwards of a million dollars and at the end of each day, you are standing in front of one of the founders of company, having to report on what you sold, what is pending, and why this or that customer was seen sitting down with a rep at a competitor's booth. Again, I am not excusing impolite behavior by reps. That is bad for them and for you. Just saying that, as Ken pointed out, time is precious and you have to go for the biggest fish.

If I could offer show go-ers one piece of advice: If you truly are in the market for a piece of equipment and intend to try to close a deal at the show, do your work ahead of time. Make contact with a rep, tell him you will be there, get a pro-forma (even of the rep cannot offer the "show price" ahead of time, which often is the case...). That way, when you walk into the booth, the rep knows that you are there to do business. That is the best way to make sure you get the attention you deserve. "Just shopping at the show", even of you may intend to buy, sometimes is not good enough. At least not at shows like this.

My 2-cents as always.

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[David Weaver]

Which booth costs $1M, the minimax and SCM all together? When we were there, the minimax booth was fairly small and all of the SCM stuff was in a separate area, which is probably why they were polite to us - I don't recall when we were there, early friday or something - and there really wasn't much traffic anywhere until later in the day.

It wasn't so much a feelings thing, it cost timesavers money. But I doubt they care about $10k or $15k of spending as the rep is probably hoping to find buyers looking to spend 10x as much.

I guess that would be my suggestion to Rich, also. Try to pick a time to go when it's not going to be as crowded if you're not representing someone who is going to make 6 figures or more in purchases for the year.

[Erik Loza]

The SCM Group booth, of which ours is a part. I assume that the other really big vendor, Stiles, pays similarly. Typically these booths are one "city block" of the convention hall floor.

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[Rich Riddle]

After reading all the information perhaps a vacation up in Northern Michigan in August presents a better idea. Thanks for all the input.

[David Weaver]

Probably - less chance of a large random expenditure.

A lot of the floor is taken up by VERY commercial production edgebanders and moulders and such, and by the time you see all of it, the stuff that you liked before (the plain sliders and the cabinet table saw sized stuff, foot wide jointer/planers) looks pretty inadequate and dull - especially after a visit through a booth like the martin booth.

Things may have changed, but most of that entry level stuff was unmanned, and at least when i was there, at the Jet/PM area, everything had a retail price tag on it and nobody was around. There were no real deals to be had, but some folks pitching regular prices like they were. There was the usual dewalt and other type booths, but there's nothing spectacular about any of them unless you live at the edge of your seat wondering what's going to change on next year's circular saws and cordless drills.

We were worried that we might not be able to see what we wanted to see in a day, but we had pretty much seen it in half a day and wandered around after that. The couple of aisles of hobbyist stuff had people yelling into microphones and running routers with dovetail jigs, and it was all sort of a "I think I'd rather have stayed home for the weekend and worked wood instead" feeling.

The things I dumped money on (spray equipment and a bunch of stuff at the LV booth, and a few other odds and ends) could've easily been bought without going there. I had a secret thought in the back of my head that I might get a j/p if I saw anything that was too good to pass up, but there wasn't anything that caught my eye.

[Peter Kelly]

Erik,

People need to know how pressure filled these trade shows can work.

1978 I was a recently promoted manager in the diagnostic imaging business. I flew into Chicago and my baggage was lost. I was wearing a pair of jeans and a ski sweater. The next morning I went to McCormick Place where the trade show was going occurring . Even though I was wearing a badge identifying me as a employee of another manufacturer, I was able to enter booths of our competitors. One company (who was out of business 2 years later) had a very unique mechanical design on the gantry of their CT scanner and I found it intriguing. That afternoon the airlines delivered my baggage to my hotel. The next morning wearing a 3 piece suit and the same badge, I returned to that particular booth to admire their very unique mechanical design....and the next thing I know, there are security guards telling me I have to leave the booth because I work for a competitor!I'm guessing that was notoriously uptight RSNA? Competitors in each others booths is pretty normal. Just flip your badge over.