I attended the AC Expo, as I do every year, and Mike is right on target. I've stopped attending the seminars and now get just the Exhibit Only pass. The exhibit hall is shrinking every year. Those vendors that do show up have put up more impressive-looking booths each year, but there are less of them.
I can't complain too much -- I got some great deals -- but the exhibits were better when there were actually VENDORS (to vend means to sell). In quite a few cases I found a product I wanted but the "vendor" told me there was nobody at the show who could sell it to me. Needless to say, I bought something else instead.
Why would a vendor pay for a booth and then not offer an attendee an opportunity to immediately purchase the product on the spot? I'm not asking for them to bring in an inventory, just to take my order and ship it to me after the show.
The Abracadabra/American DJ booth and the Chauvet booths were the only big-scale resellers, I think, but they were both selling mostly lighting. Thankfully, there were two small booths who could fulfill some of the audio orders: Mainline (NY) and
www.ifidj.com. I miss the times when there were companies like Upstairs Records and others competing as resellers.
Linear Mode
