May 2008 Edition

EDITOR'S CORNER

Paradigm Shift

What does the future hold for metalworking trade shows and magazines?

I just flew in from LA and boy is my sitter tired. My legs, too. I spent two days walking the floor at the WESTEC show. A very productive trip, but it raised some questions.

The first is how many shows are too many? It seems not a week goes by when another general machine tool show isn’t announced. Last year it was the AMMO show, and recently I received a release for The American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association and Society of Manufacturing Engineers Machine Tool Experience – Las Vegas [see Industry News]. An "experience," huh. I wonder if it’s similar to "experiences" such as an automobile accident or a house fire. I can only hope it’s more pleasant.

So, besides EASTEC, WESTEC, FABTECH, and IMTS, we now have another show or six toward which to look forward. If we’re lucky enough to be located near a show, it wouldn’t be too hard to attend. But, how many shop owners are going to chase around the country to see these shows? How many manufacturers are going to spend the time and tremendous effort to transport their machines to each of these shows?

Having witnessed the outstanding presence of manufacturers such as Haas, MAG Fadal, and Makino, I wonder just how many shows these, and other manufacturers, are willing to attend before they can’t justify moving their machines around the country.

I suppose that anyone willing to invest in a new machine is going to want to kick the tires before making the purchase. And, there aren’t many places much better suited to that than a trade show. The same goes for finding an undreamed of solution to a problem. Some of the smaller booths can offer technologies, products, or processes that do just that.

But, is hauling 20,000 tons of equipment the way to do it? The government exhorts us to use compact fluorescent lights in our homes to reduce energy consumption. I’d think just the transportation costs associated with moving equipment around to trade shows could postpone that change-over to the year 2525.

A Glimpse of Things to Come?

Attending a trade show is like browsing a bookstore: it’s a chance to not only find the book one wants, but also an opportunity to see what else is out there. But, the bricks-and-mortar bookstore model is in trouble. The Borders Group, the operating company of Borders Books, is in financial trouble and putting itself up for sale. It seems that online booksellers, such as Amazon, are putting the squeeze on physical bookstores ranging from the small independents – now almost extinct – to the big box bookstores.

Will that be the way of the tradeshow? Already, some manufacturers are finding ways to cut show costs by providing virtual reality displays of their machines rather than hauling big iron from city to city. The big question is whether you, the buyers, will accept such a change of the rules, the old paradigm shift. It took Amazon 13 years to get to its current position, but we all know that change is accelerating. I’m betting that in another 13 years that there will be a significant change in metalworking trade shows.

Affecting Changes Across the Board

Not only will trade shows change, but how buyers learn about products will change, too – something that has already started to happen. The dynamic of print publications is changing as the Internet and personal digital devices – we can’t call them just telephones anymore – evolve. Publications are changing to suit the evolving information age. First it was the large-format magazines. Look, Life, Colliers, and the Saturday Evening Post disappeared as radio and television took their market share.

Newspapers are now hitting the skids as cable TV and the Internet change the way news is delivered.

While the commercial magazine market has found some success in fragmentation and vertical markets – at my stop at the LA airport newsstand I saw what seemed to be a couple of hundred magazines, each catering to specialized markets such as teen shoes or celebrity excess – none rival the circulations of their extinct ancestors.

The business-to-business magazine market is not immune to paradigm shift, either. MAN, for instance, has expanded into an electronic newsletter and a website. The secret is to stay nimble enough to find, and ride, the next wave.

Shows like IMTS will probably be around for another 60+ years, but I’m willing to bet that the 2068 show will be unrecognizable to those of us who spanned the 20th and 21st Centuries.