How Much Do You Actually Spend At Transworld?

[oakhillshaunterTHEFEAR]

You guys on the previous poll I setup established two big facts.

1. You guys can't agree on a permananent location.
2. You guys definately don't want it to move year after year.

So now I've decided that yea keep it in St. Louis. You guys complaining about Chicago and INDY INDY INDY no more. St. Louis is the new permanent location. I'll stop complaining about it not coming to CA.
Heres the new question. Some of you brought up a few arguements that TW is better than MHC because it brings more QUALIFIED buyers to the event. Some like MHC more because of the lower prices for both vendors and attendees.

So here is the new question how much do you QUALIFIED buyers actually end up spending at Transworld?

[hauntedhousenut]

Vincent

No one is going to tell you what they spend, because it's their personal business, not yours or anyone else's.

[drfrightner]

BACK ON TOPIC FOR A SECOND...

This actually a very good question. I will tell you why. Many people don't know how much they should spend to keep their attraction going up, what percentage of your gross, what is to much or to little. Additionally this also gives vendors an idea where people are in terms of how much they are bringing to the show. The tradeshow organizers will want to know how many dollars got spent, they need to know, the industry needs to know what impact our industry brings to a tradeshow city, and what is flying around our industry.

One day we need to get to the bottom of this without being to intrusive into your private information.

In the past I've spent as much if not more than $100,000.00. I think a haunt should spend at least 10 to 15% of their gross income on fixing up their haunted house for the follownig year. Keep in mind I'm spending for TWO ATTRACTIONS... so cut the 100k in HALF! I would never spend 100k on ONE PLACE EVER! $50,000.00 is on the high end for one attraction but I'm sure there are no less than 100 plus other haunts spending this amount or more at the show no doubt about it.

Last year we spent a lot of money at Transworld...this year we will probably not place any orders. Why? Because we already redid the Darkness for this tour and we are so over budget we're nearly bankrupcty over here. So no money spend at Transworld for Darkness.

We won't spend any money for Creepyworld either because we have been so focused on Darkness we don't know yet what we will do with Creepyworld yet. Key is yet! Will we spend money YES! Will we spend money based on what we see only at Transworld YES!

We will probably buy something around $50,000.00 worth of product based on what we see at Transworld sometime towards the end of spring.

We just don't have a plan for Creepyworld but once we do we'll start making orders. A lot of what we will do could be based on what we see at Transworld.

So I'm hoping the vendors bring some cool stuff! I'm looking forward to it.

Larry

[drfrightner]

Based on my past research here is what I think is a fair idea. The poll listed is just whack going by 1000's ... I will change the poll and start this over.

I think most haunt owners are spending about $12,000.00. Some if they are new could spend as much as $100,000 to $250,000.00 depending on what they are doing or buying. If you place an order for a whole attraction that right here is $100k probably.

I think about 50% are spending between 10 and 20k.

25% are spending between 5000 and 10,000

15% are spending more than 20k

less than 10% are spending over 50k

Larry

[Grimley]

Larry you say you aren't buying anything but if you are like me you are going to go to the show and see something you can't live without. It will happen.

[mindtumor]

This isn't a good question it is just another irrelevant post from this guy. It isn't any of your business what I spend and it isn't any of my business what you spend. Period. I can see it from a total numbers stand point but once you start breaking down what individuals are spending it won't be long before minimum orders are required. Do you honestly believe the majority of haunted houses are spending 50k at the show? Did you talk to over a 100 haunted house owners that told you they spend over 50k? Or did you talk to 9 or 10 and then multiply it? And by the way do you have to fill a quota for deleted posts in a day or something? It is starting to get pointless even posting on here anymore.

[Haunted Illinois]

This poll has one major flaw. It doesn't allow for all those people who spend LESS than $5,000. Is 5K the new minimum required spend, to enter the show?

[Motograter]

This poll has one major flaw. It doesn't allow for all those people who spend LESS than $5,000. Is 5K the new minimum required spend, to enter the show?

Good point Adam, because I only plan on spending about $200.00 at the show.

[Kevin Dells]

As a non owner that has worked very closley with owners i will say this, i believe an owner is going to spend what they can based on how they did the season prior.

If numbers were way down of course the spending for animatronics and effects may not be in the budget at all. If the owner has a good season and the money's there to spend then you know their going to rehab a section of their haunt to offer something new for the following year customers. I meen hey what owner dosen't have a wishlist of themes they would like to have one day.
Lets keep in mind that although this is possibly some help to vendors to see what people are spending there really is no real answer, every haunt is very different on expenditures and even the way they build.

As a guy that built for Rockford Screamfest in Illinois i can say that it is a very different circumstance than building for Woods of Terror in North Carolina. I will elaborate for everyone.

In Rockford we leased a very expensive building with flat floors so i would say a huge part of our budget was spent on wall panels and wall dressings with some props and animatronics. The cost of the building was off the charts and we had truckloads of panels for our mazes.

In North Carolina most haunts are outdoors because our weather is so much more adaptable to patrons, guys like Tony at Spookywoods and Eddie at the Woods of Terror lease or own land that the attractions are built on in a somewhat permenant way. I know working for Eddie he wanted us to build good solid peices that would last at least 5 years if not more. Seeing Tony's ghostown one would agree he wants it to last. So the point here is it takes a lot of wood and other materials to build big tall long lasting structures.

IF... The guys down here have a good season and decide to make the investment into a new section or haunt their not just repainting wall panels for the new theme and building a sectional new facade, their building huge structured facades to last the years.

Props in the southern circumstance are nice but just won't withstand the weather so many owners i think would spend the money on other things that will.

I think if your going to do a poll you might get a lot better information as to wether the haunts are indoors or outdoors because it is two totally different ballgames being played. Also i would consider it different to guys like xxxdirk who rents and tears down after season because once again this is an owner that quite possibly won't buy huge animatronics because their a hassle to set up and tear down quickly. Everything Ron builds has to be prebuilt in peices and he has to have storage for everything he buys,again another different ballgame.

Just something to think about people, everybody plays a different sort of game in this bussiness,everyone has different needs and for some they spend away at Transworld while some invest all their money at home depot and lowes.

[drfrightner]

Good point... I added UNDER $5000.00

Lets try to stay on topic and save the jabs... this topic isn't another way for someone to brag, its not another way to tell people how great you are or how low on the pole you are right now. Everyone starts somewhere I know I did I started on teh UNDER $500.00 not under $5000.00.

We can let vendors know where we are at, and what we might do to help them know what might be the situation coming up.

The more we spend the more vendors might make.

I think haunts should spend at least 10 to 15% of their gross on improving their haunted house. Last year I spent a lot of money for a good reason we added new attractions to Creepyworld. It takes money to make money... in the days of high end special effect movies, high tech video games we have to stay ahead of the curve.

GO BIG! THINK BIG! GO FOR BROKE! NO RISK NO REWARD!

PUSH YOURSELF! GO TO THE LIMIT and it will pay off for you if you believe in what you do!

Larry

[drfrightner]

Jared,

NO I DID NOT EVEN SAY THAT... I said about 10% of haunts who will attend the show will spend $50k plus. If you buy two major effects from Scarefactory right there you are at $25,000.00. See my point? Then you walk around buy a bunch of pigs from ghost ride, body parts from this guy, costumes from this person, bam, bam, bam you are at $50,000.00.

There will be MORE THAN 100 haunts who will walk through that door who will spend some major coin and I mean major coin. A lot of those people are big haunts who don't do all the hard work like you do, who do most of the work yourself. They just want to buy stuff, load up on what they see.

There are several people who places mega orders. The reality however is the mass majority of haunts are spending less than $15k at these shows. That is the reality but that doesn't mean there isn't haunts dropping $50k with just one vendor because it happens several times a day at the show.

Look at Nightmare New England who built everything from scratch last year big mega haunt...how much do you think they dropped? They bought three haunts from Oak Island alone what do you think that bill was?

See what I'm saying. Again the majority is less than 15k no doubt about it, and many of those haunts are well established haunts who are just doing polish work on something. DOesn't mean they can't afford to spend more just don't need to.

Again as to myself, I've already redone the Darkness at this point so I'm out of money!!!! I'm broke! Seriously I'm broke! LOL

Larry

[DollFacexHorror]

Your right

I'll keep away from jabs and just ignore the blatant hypocrity with most of the threads and replies to them with whose gets to stay and go... also stay on the positive side so that i can make sure to be on everyones "good side"
________
vaporizer help

[Front Yard Fright]

I'll keep away from jabs and just ignore the blatant hypocrity with most of the threads and replies to them with whose gets to stay and go... also stay on the positive side so that i can make sure to be on everyones "good side"

I'm right there behind ya.
.

[The Parker House]

I’m with you Larry. You definitely have to spend money in order to make money.
Every season is a new opportunity to wow your market. We only have 20-30 days to make an impression on your customers that will make them want to come back the next season and even better, tell all there friends about how great of a time they had. (Best advertisement ever.)
I hear lots of new haunt owners saying that there just starting out and can’t afford to do a whole lot until they make some money. I feel that even though this keeps the risk down, it won’t grow your business very well. You MUST make a big impression right out the gate. Otherwise you will always be digging yourself out of a hole. Constantly struggling to get people wanting to see your show.
I played around at my home haunt for many years just as a past time. In Jan 08 I decided I was going to create a professional. haunt. I went “balls to the wall” and put on a pretty good show. We are in a fairly large market with more then 30 large professional haunts within a 40 mile radius. We actually spent 90% of our budget on build and props and only 10% on advertising. Now some might say you have to do a lot of advertise in order to get the #s. But we where more interested in giving the people that we did get there a show they would remember. We were still able to pull over 10,000 people. So this year we will do less remolding and more advertising. So we only plan on spending about $30,000 at the show this year instead of the $50,000 we spent last year.
I feel like this type of information is good to spread around for 2 reasons.

1- The more the vendors know we are looking to spread on product, the harder they will be working to create sound products that wont break down and keep our business year after year. If they can see how much we as an industry was willing to spend at a show and there sales where minimal. Then they should know that they need to take another look at what it is there offering. Also it will show the vendors how much its worth to be at the shows so they will keep retuning. (I know I would rather go to one or two shows a year and see pretty much all of the latest and greatest instead of having to shop online and hope that what you get is as great as it looked in the pic.)

2- It helps other haunt owners know what the others are doing to succeed.

A little long winded, but I hope it was helpful.
In short, my answer is $30,000 for our second season.

[kpolley]

I don't understand why people think this is not relevant or intrusive. First, it doesn't say who voted what so you aren't broadcasting your personal financial situation to the world. Second, Larry is absolutely right about this being important to vendors. I spent about an hour with a friend of ours talking about the show and we both concluded that we don't know what to expect. By giving the vendors an idea of what you might spend it gives us some idea of what we can expect and with things going the way they are none of us vendors want to get blindsided. I like the poll. I think it's useful information and, so far, I'm not disapointed with the results. It gives me an idea of what's to come.