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FMI Plans '08 Booth Show in Vegas, '09 Event in Dallas

ARLINGTON, Va. Food Marketing Institute isn't going to gamble on whether attendees might be lured away from the sessions at the association's first all-education version of its annual show. As it gears up to launch an alternating-year conference and trade show format that rotates to different cities, FMI reversed its original plan and instead will produce booth-exhibit shows for the next two years

ARLINGTON, Va. — Food Marketing Institute isn't going to gamble on whether attendees might be lured away from the sessions at the association's first all-education version of its annual show.

As it gears up to launch an alternating-year conference and trade show format that rotates to different cities, FMI reversed its original plan and instead will produce booth-exhibit shows for the next two years — at McCormick Place in Chicago this year, as previously scheduled, and then at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas in May 2008. The first education-only event is scheduled to take place at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas in May 2009. The plan was originally the opposite, with an education event in Las Vegas and a booth show in Dallas.

“We had some members that said to us that they think that Las Vegas is a more comfortable city for an exhibit event, and another city would be more comfortable for us for an educational forum,” Tim Hammonds, FMI's president and chief executive officer, said in an interview with SN.

The educational conference will be focused around the concept of personnel development on both the retailer/wholesaler side and the manufacturer side, he explained — a topic that is expected to attract younger executives.

“We decided that perhaps there were too many distractions in Las Vegas for that audience,” Hammonds said. “As a result, we just flipped our cities, and we will be in Vegas in '08 and Dallas in '09 with our education forum.”

In addition, he said the original plan to stage an exhibit show in odd-numbered years would have overlapped with the alternate-year scheduling of the show produced by the National Association of Foodservice Equipment Manufacturers, which has a large exhibit conference in odd-numbered years.

Another change in the show scheduling planned for 2008 is a switch to a Monday-through-Wednesday format, rather than starting the conference on a Sunday. The 2008 FMI Show is scheduled for May 5-7.

“We have been hearing for some time that the current generation of executives value the weekend as family time vs. a decade or so ago, when people were saying to have the show on the weekend,” Hammonds said. “Now they are saying, ‘Family time is really scarce and hard to come by, so we'd like to preserve the weekend as much as we can.’”

The change to a weekday-only format, which had been sought by members for several years but could not previously be made because of FMI's contract with McCormick Place, will be in effect for both the booth conference in 2008 and the educational event in 2009.

PARTNER SHOWS

FMI will continue to partner with the United Fresh Produce Association in staging both the booth show and the educational conference, according to the UFPA, although one of the “Power of Five” trade shows that had been co-locating with the FMI Show has already backed out.

The National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, based in New York, said it would continue to host its Spring Fancy Food Show in Chicago without FMI in 2008. The 2008 show will be sometime in April, said NASFT spokesman Ron Tanner.

“A lot of our shows draw from a radius of 300 miles,” he told SN. “The purpose of the spring show is to promote specialty foods in the Midwest.”

The association stages additional Fancy Food Shows at other times of the year in other areas of the country.

Hammonds said FMI has been in discussions with the Organic Trade Association about co-locating its All Things Organic conference beyond 2007, but no decision has been made. An OTA spokesman could not be reached last week.

DeWitt Ashby, director of trade shows for the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, Washington, which has been co-locating its U.S. Export Showcase with the FMI Show for several years, told SN last week that the group has not made a decision about whether to continue the partnership with FMI or possibly remain co-located with the Fancy Food Show in Chicago in 2008. A third option would be not to have a show at all, he said.

“Unlike some other associations, we don't really rely on these shows for our financial well-being,” he said, explaining that the group gets funding from the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service.

Hammonds told SN he believed that Las Vegas would be a good draw for the type of international attendees NASDA seeks to attract, but Ashby said his group would prefer to see a “more stable” plan in place for the next several years before it makes a commitment. He said NASDA's board of directors would consider its options in the coming days.

“I think FMI made a good decision for FMI, and Las Vegas is an appealing venue for a lot of reasons, but the question is, what comes after that?” Ashby said. He added that NASDA was “not upset” about FMI's decision to switch formats and rotate to different cities — “Everybody has to function in their own interest,” he said.

He also pointed out that NASDA contributes “about half a million dollars” each year to promoting the show to international attendees, also through funding from the FAS, although he said FMI also has its own international recruiting network.

MARKETECHNICS CO-LOCATES

Beginning this year, FMI will stage its Marketechnics conference in tandem with the May show, rather than in its traditional January or February time slot. In 2009, when FMI switches to an educational forum in Dallas, Marketechnics has been scheduled for the Dallas Convention Center immediately following the FMI Show.

As previously reported, FMI confirmed it has secured former Vice President Al Gore as a keynote speaker in a nod to the technological focus of this year's FMI Show partnership with Marketechnics.

“Al has had an abiding interest in technology generally, and so we asked him to address the future of technology in our economy,” Hammonds told SN.

The FMI Pharmacy Conference also will co-locate with FMI in Chicago this year, but FMI said it had not determined whether the two shows would continue to co-locate in 2008 and 2009.

The decision to focus on personnel development as the theme of the first educational conference in Dallas in 2009 was driven by concerns among FMI's membership about a looming demographic challenge facing all businesses: Someone has to replace the aging members of today's workforce.

“As we have surveyed and interviewed a lot of people in this industry, that has come back as the No. 1 problem,” Hammonds said. “There is a huge baby boom managing and running our companies right now, and as they begin to retire, there is a smaller group behind them. Also, in our industry generally, I think we can do a better job of both attracting talent to our industry and then developing them into leadership roles as this baby boom generation moves to the other end of the pipeline.”

The theme also will be addressed at this month's Midwinter Conference in Grand Lakes, Fla., and to some degree at the 2008 exhibit conference in Las Vegas.

The Dallas educational conference will also have multiple, high-profile speakers and will offer a core group of sessions early in the event geared to attract senior executives, Hammonds said.

FMI's New Show Plan

2007 (exhibit show): May 6-8, McCormick Place, Chicago, co-located with Marketechnics, the FMI Pharmacy Conference, All Things Organic, the Spring Fancy Food Show, United Fresh Marketplace and the U.S. Food Export Showcase.

2008 (exhibit show): May 5-7, Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, Las Vegas, co-located with Marketechnics and United Fresh Marketplace. Not included: the 2008 Spring Fancy Food Show, which will remain in Chicago. Other partnerships as yet undecided.

2009 (education forum): May 4-6, Hyatt Regency, Dallas, followed by Marketechnics, May 6-8, Dallas Convention Center.