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Traci Borsch and Natalie Burnside make a living helping tech clients make a splash at trade shows
Thursday, November 02, 2000 By Stephanie Franken, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Correction/Clarification: (Published Nov. 4, 2000) An article Thursday about trade shows incorrectly spelled the name of the Ross company Cavanaugh and its vice president, Mark Algeri.
Traci Borsch and Natalie Burnside's clients spend most of their time dealing with that weightless universe called cyberspace.
But they also spend big chunks of time in settings where the laws of gravity not only apply, they rule.
Technology firms do a high volume of business at trade shows -- events that involve schlepping tons of expensive equipment and teams of technology experts from country to country, city to city, hotel to hotel. As high-tech event planners, Borsch and Burnside work to ensure that these shows run smoothly. It's a tricky but much-in-demand job as growth in the trade show business is booming.
It is a tinge ironic that Internet tools designed to set people free by allowing them to do business anywhere, anytime, gain acceptance only if the tools' creators haul computers, giant monitors, massive display booths and boxes of trinkets from one trade show to the next -- where they spend hour upon hour glad-handing potential clients and customers. In addition to months of planning, the events can require all-night setups and last-minute outings to find missing computer parts.
But for all the headaches they can induce, trade shows can be crucial to a young tech company's survival. So it is that Borsch and Burnside have found it's a good time to be in the headache-prevention business.
The pair, which met while working at IBM, founded their two-person company, Perfect PlanIt, in November 1999. They had a hunch that their combined experience in technology, communications and corporate event-planning would pay dividends if they specialized in planning high-tech exhibits.
"It's not like planning a corporate Christmas party," Borsch said.
As it turned out, their hunch was right: They quickly grew accustomed to turning business away. By the end of their first summer, Perfect PlanIt had earned enough money -- $700,000 in revenue -- to allow its founders to take off the entire month of August.
"Their attention to detail and professionalism is just amazing. There is no detail they don't cover," said Jean Trilli, community e-commerce specialist for ElderVision, a Pittsburgh Internet company that has hired Perfect PlanIt for several trade shows.
A direct and personal way to promote a business, the trade show circuit is a busy one.
While the television advertising industry is cooling as a result of a slowdown in dot.com spending, the trade show industry is growing. Software, hardware and e-business companies rely on the shows to gain recognition and credibility among groups with a high likelihood of actually purchasing the goods and services they sell.
Nationally, the number of trade shows is up 6 percent from 1999, according to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research. And the number of people who will attend trade shows -- 112 million -- is up almost 10 percent compared with last year.
In Pittsburgh, the trade show industry's potential to create more jobs spurred the creation in December 1999 of RiverPoint TradeShows, a group supported by the Greater Pittsburgh Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance. The organization seeks to bring trade shows in "emerging" industries, such as tissue engineering and robotics, to Pittsburgh.
MetalSite, a Robinson company that streamlines purchasing for metals industry customers and suppliers, participates in several trade shows each year. "They are, without question, one of the primary ways we communicate with our target audience," spokeswoman Maggie Bray said of the shows.
The Downtown Internet video company MediaSite attended 25 trade shows last year, where it generated a large number of strong leads, said Mavis Rainey, the company's marketing manager. Trade shows help companies appear to be "players" in their industries, she said. "They increase visibility in the trade media and among analysts who may be attending."
On the trade show floor, competition for attention can be cutthroat. So tech companies work hard -- and cough up a lot of cash -- to drive people to their booths, going so far as to raffle off a BMW convertible, a $17,000 watch or a solid-gold Montblanc pen.
Sometimes promotional tactics are less expensive but very aggressive.
At a recent event attended by FreeMarkets Inc. representatives, "One company was giving out T-shirts in a bag, but only if you would dump someone else's bag in their dumpster," said Gayle Wilson, the online auction company's corporate events manager.
Some companies rely on cleverness to make a splash.
Cavanaugh Promotions, an international promotional products company with a local office in Ross, dreams up interesting trinkets that tech companies can give away at shows. Business is strong and growing, abetted by a surge in e-commerce business, said Mark Algeri, vice president of sales. One Cavenaugh creation, a liquid mouse pad filled with little floating icons, won an award as a trade show handout.
One of Perfect PlanIt's favorite items was a rubber ball, made of hundreds of rubber bands and sealed with one fat rubber band to signify Marconi's expertise in "broadband," a networking technology that speeds Internet connections.
Another necessary trade show item is the booth itself, which can cost from $10 to $30 per square foot, topping out at more than $100,000. The booths must be assembled on site, though they are reusable, said Jeff Steigerwalt, owner of Skyline Displays, which employs 16 locally and makes 150 to 250 booths per year.
The expense and hassle involved in hauling equipment from trade show to trade show is hard and at times harrowing.
FreeMarkets' 30-by-30-foot display takes a crew of four and one supervisor 12 to 16 hours to install and 6 to 9 hours to dismantle, said Wilson. "And a lot of halls have strict rules about who can do what. In some places, you have to pay an electrician to plug things in."
ElderVision's Trilli said the special wiring and connections necessary to run the company's programs requires a lot of complex computer equipment. "It must be delicately handled -- and it must work."
Precision is necessary, noted Perfect PlanIt's Burnside, because the stakes are high.
"If you can't get your technology up and running, you may as well have sent a brochure," she said. She and Borsch once went as far as to make a special stop at a Washington, D.C., Naval research lab their client uses to borrow a rare piece of computer equipment for a trade show in Phoenix.
But if something doesn't work by the time the show starts, the worst thing company representatives can do is fret, fiddle with equipment and ignore the people who walk by, they said.
"Even at the perfect show, things can go wrong," said Borsch. And when they do, the best response is to keep smiling and shake some hands.
Even in the cyberspace era, deals at trade shows happen face to face.
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