Marine and RV dealers (and even some powersports dealers) devote a lot of time, energy, and money at the beginning of each season to shows.
I’ve always debated the value of these events. Spending long days/nights to clone our showrooms in an event center. Working the team members for 16 to 18 hours at a time, for up to 2 weeks. Taking it all down in just a few hours (and because everyone is beat, usually damaging some product in the process). And, all this to be shoulder to shoulder with our competition, fighting to see who can lose the most money on each deal. Sounds like fun!
Post-pandemic, all these things are working against the show:
– Customers don’t want to congregate in large groups of strangers
– Dealers don’t have much inventory, and there is no need to give product away
– Over the last 6 months customers have gotten better at using the web to research products
I’ll admit, there are some benefits to presenting products in these shows. It can kick off the year when things are normally slow, and the good dealers do a nice job of collecting customer info so they can stay in contact. However, I’m not sure that the pros outweigh the cons.
Are you done with shows?
#PowerSports #Marine #RV #Shows #TradeShows #Spader #Covid