Expomania: Consumer Chaos or Signs of Intelligent Life in the Capitalist Universe?
By Matt Keleman
I’m searching for the bejeweled fishing pole. I know it’s here. I’ve been taunted by glimpses of it in the brochure, but trying to locate it in the massive confines of the 3.2-million-square foot Las Vegas Convention Center is like trying to locate WMDs in 170,000-square-miles of desert. Maybe it was just a lure meant to reel me in amongst rows and rows of fascinating objects at the ASD consumer trade show assuming that quickly after arriving one will forget about solving the mystery of how much a bejeweled fishing pole would cost, at least wholesale.
ASD Las Vegas may not draw the attention of the world’s media as the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) does each January, but is symbolic of the expo industry as a whole. Except for slowdowns during the summer and winter holiday seasons, the Las Vegas expo industry is a crush of consumer and wholesaler shows held in huge halls from Wynn Las Vegas and the Sands Expo Center at the north end of the Strip to Mandalay Bay on the southern tip. CES, a tech geek’s paradise that draws 140,000 attendees, comes right after the adult industry convenes in Vegas for a cluster of events that include the Adult Novelty Expo, where retailers make their decisions about what dildos will line the shelves at your local sex shops. The pace continues until June, when the JCK Las Vegas jewelry show brings 31,000 gemstone buyers and sellers to town.
Things are fairly quiet during the summer until ASD sets up shop at the Convention Center at the end of July. The displays and booths in the North Hall, where gift and home décor wholesalers blend with toy and novelty vendors, are packed to excess with products of every imaginable kind. Hundreds of exquisitely crafted baby dolls sit on shelves within range of a display of toy firearms that look real enough to hold up a bank. An artificial floral display company designed their booth as a mini-forest. Stetson hats are on display one row away from a company that sells Himalayan salt crystal lamps. Remote controlled helicopters hover. A band draws attention to a booth occupied by a company that makes kid-sized instruments. We “R” Toys displays what appears to be an inventory of knock off goods, under a sign with a font suspiciously similar to that of Toys “R” Us.
“You should see this place on Wednesday around 2 p.m. It’s a madhouse,” says Claudia Gehen at the Designed 4 Life booth, where the Himalayan salt lamps are priced for wholesale at half of what they go for on Amazon. On the last day of ASD exhibitors go shopping, snatching up items on display that vendors don’t want to ship home. “Most of our salt lamps have been reserved already,” she says, handing me a salt rock sample as if it were a consolation prize.
Beyond the gift and home accessories, past the toys and novelties, hundreds of jewelry wholesalers display a fortune in gold, silver, diamonds, loose stones, used Rolexes and assorted jewelry. Eastern European, Asian and Semitic tongues can be heard as the exhibitors make “cash and carry” deals with wholesalers.
More halls lay beyond. Health and beauty products – in the midst of the fragrance district, a woman who sounds exactly like Arianna Huffington coaxes passers-by to hop on a vibrating platform that allegedly burns calories. One entire area of the Central Hall contains several acres of Chinese vendors offering every product imaginable – from the bath mats of the Wenzhou Wanya Plastics Co., Ltd to the anonymous animals of the Changxing Huabao Pet Toys Co., Ltd – while the South Hall is entirely populated by “Value & Variety” exhibitors whose tons of cheap merchandise fills the shelves of America’s dollar stores.
As the fall fashion season approaches, ASD (34,500 estimated attendees) and shoe industry trade event WSA (17,000) help kick off a dizzying series of shows of all sizes, including the cosmetic industry’s CosmoProf North America (5500), Edible Arrangements International (500), and the Summer Las Vegas Market (50,000) at the World Market Center, a three-building complex that sends attendees as high as 16 stories in search of furniture and home décor. Its construction in a formerly dilapidated railroad district facilitated the development of the surrounding area, and the WMC now has a Frank Gehry-designed Alzheimer’s clinic and a palatial Performing Arts Center as their neighbors. Bill Clinton was the keynote speaker for the 2011 Summer Market.
While some expos have affected the skyline of Las Vegas, some just invade like an occupying army. The twice yearly MAGIC Marketplace draws 75,000 from across the fashion industry. Most of them come for the networking and wholesale buying opportunities, but nearly every nightclub in every hotel-casino tries to draw in MAGIC crowds before, during and after the three-day event. For a brief, blessed period of time the clubs stop building nights around reality show stars and pop chart flavors-of-the-month, and feature more cutting edge and progressive musicians and DJs that don’t include Vegas on their regular touring schedules.
One hitch though: the public is not invited. The parties, like the expos themselves, are for industry insiders. While CES is notorious for infiltrators trying to buy products at wholesale prices, security is universally tight and non-industry outsiders are considered trespassers. The International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association, which took place at the Sands Convention Center in July, bluntly warns “Any consumer discovered on the trade show floor or event will have their badge confiscated, escorted off the trade show floor, and will be barred from future trade shows.”A little harsh, but ultimately expos are about doing business. It’s a rare occasion for people to see who they do business with eye-to-eye.
Consumers aren’t barred from all marketplace-type events. Thousands of fans descend on Vegas for each November for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, which includes a Cowboy Christmas Gift Show that has become an essential element of NFR. Western wear and every conceivable accessory a modern-day cowboy could conceive are offered in a sprawling sell-a-thon.
“The Cowboy Christmas Gift Show is a vital part of the overall NFR experience,” emails Anne Aznarez, show manager for the Cowboy Christmas Gift Show. “We have found that fans make this a part of their itinerary during the rodeo and it does drive incremental visits as well. As the official gift show of the Wrangler NFR, proceeds do flow back to the rodeo, thus allowing us to further enrich the overall experience for fans.”
At its most extreme the expo experience can encompass marketing cars, concrete, cosmetics, loose gems, Chinese bath mats and Original Man Candles that smell like farts, golf courses and “Beach Babes” all in one space. A lot of these products will never be seen by the majority of consumers, but an entrepreneur from Oklahoma whose entire world revolves around selling pizza-scented candles needs a universe such as ASD Las Vegas. The expo world is a galaxy unto itself with a constellation of trade shows that take place all over the world: In China, Australia, Sao Paulo, Singapore, New York – with some expos, like comets, that only appear on certain years in certain location like the World Flower Expo that will take place in New York City’s Javits Center in March 2012 for the first time in over 7 years. So, what may look like consumer chaos to the rest of us is just part of the cosmic order of capitalism.