Over the past couple of years, you have seen a decline of the larger vendors attending the events. I know in our case, the Covid impact has given us some insight into attending the shows and the actual cost vs staying home and filling orders. With that said, talking to a variety of the vendors of various sizes, all of them are seeing that the cost of the shows vs the profit margin no longer supports a full blown effort to attend the shows. I know that with Carlisle this 2020 year, we down sized at least 50% knowing that the attendance would not support our usual display.

For a larger show like Carlisle our cost breaks down as:
20 spots at $90.00 each = $1800.00
50 x 60 tent to cover and protect the product: $2600
Fuel for truck and support vehicles: $735
Truck and trailer expense: $690
Compensation for helpers and staff: $1250
Lodging Expense for a couple of the guys: $495
Food: $275

So that totals $7845 which is pretty typical for the past couple of years. Those cost are basically incurred before you ever leave the drive. We try to be as frugal as possible as the profit margin is quickly eaten up.

For the past couple of years, fuel has been relatively cheap, but I am afraid that we could be seeing an additional 40% increase this year in the cost of fuel. We stay on the grounds at Carlisle and have to stay off sight at The Nats. Still at Carlisle, we will have close to a $500 lodging expense and for Columbus, that cost is closer to $1400. For Carlisle we fix sandwiches and bring food to eat, so I allocate $275 for Carlisle and since we are at hotels for Columbus, the food expense approaches $450 even with bringing snack food from home for lunch and breakfast.

The real cost of doing these shows is the time to prep, load out , set up, break it down, load it back up, get home and unload it and put it back in place or to inventory for the next show. It is very difficult to put a cost to this time, but one person can easily spend two weeks just bagging, sorting, pricing and prepping for the Carlisle or Nats show. Then, the travel time is basically 14 hours one way for Carlisle, 9 hours for Columbus. The time between getting back home from Carlisle to get ready for Columbus leaves you with may be one week to get in or build more inventory.

Over the past couple of years, we seem to always loose a couple hundreds of dollars of inventory that seems to walk away without anyone knowing about it. In 2019, the freak storm that hit us at the Nats cost us approximately $23,000.

With that said, as Bill and Mike spoke of, the cost of doing the venues are extremely expensive and cost continues to increase. I have the feeling that the shows in five years will see a major change for the swap meet / vendor support.

At this point, we are still on the fence for the Indy show in a couple of weeks. If we do attend, it will be 20% of our usual display. Hopefully Carlisle and The Nats will go on as planned, but I am sure that we will be cutting back as we see how things flow. The Bowling Green event is the closest show to us and the least expensive for overall cost, so we will be bringing a down sized Carlisle setup for that event.

The shows are important in that it gives us the opportunity to put faces to a name and to allow people to actually see and touch the product. But times are changing and we all have to make the decision as to what is best for ourselves and the business.