I am really concerned

[Ken Spriggs]

HA

WHOA.........look at this for lovely vegas


http://www.lvrj.com/news/41078067.html

[FrightProps]

Umm oakhillshaunterTHEFEAR

Hey oakhillshaunterTHEFEAR:

There are TONS of shows you long for in your post; Midwest Haunters, HauntCon, National Haunters Convention to name a few!

Do you not know about these show? You might want to look into them.

Doug.

[FrightProps]

Ken...

Yes, Ben also posted that link last night.

I seriously considered not doing any tradeshows this year. Then I seriously considered scaling back to 1 booth. The economy is just so scary right now! But we are in the business of scaring people so what the heck!!!

In the end I just decided to support this show 100%. I honestly believe that Haunts will do really well this season for a number of reasons.

Doug.

[Gore Galore]

I think Doug is right in his projections.

I also think Haunts are up for a good year, and I know many did well last year.
You still have to take into consideration many haunts are for the love of haunting or the second job, so even if they did well the day job may not be doing well.

But regardless, I think the Haunt show is going to be great. I just have this exciting gut feeling so we went all out and designed a ton of new stuff. We actually had to make a new Catalog just for the 2009 product we made so much.

I hope the buyers will feel the same way.

All that we have left to do is take video footage and drop it into the DVD catalog and burn 'em.

[Greg Chrise]

The funny part is that with the world wide market having all sorts of lay offs and bankruptcys to announce, the whole haunt culture is made up of people that from long ago figured out not to put all their eggs in one basket. We all use the term day job but, in a lot of cases it is the day business that for years has actually been businesses all run at the same time.

As such Larry's desire to see the tradeshow exactly how cool the retail shows work is not a proper match. That only works as a culture if everyone involved is in fact making a living 100% from haunted house doings. All the noise, the meeting up, the vacation atmosphere and such are culture. The fact that some of these things needed to spring up elsewhere is that the main show originally did not fit all the needs of the culture oreinted.

The go getters are not the proper customers. At least not for a long term tradeshow to thrive on. You have to continue to cultivate who the future customers will be with what ever silliness will engage them. eep them engaged until they are involved in the routine. Some things will temporarily simply go by the way side. I'm never going to pay $25 for a trophy to show off my hearse again. That was pretty clever as far as making maybe $15 per hearse or something.

And over a great number of years the bottom line to other events I have seen fail came down to the fundamanetal wrong of for example giving $10 to stand in someone's large yard while they operate their shop selling things. On a normal day you can go buy things and it costs nothing. When it gets right down to it, how great is it to just stand in a room or out in a field with thousands of other people and nothing is going on. There has to be something entertaining rather than expecting people to pay to entertain themelves.

Many people will have no choice but to hold back on making the scene as even with multiple business intrests they are all tugging at each other. People that truely have jobs that get weekly paychecks have no idea how to spend money to make money and won't. These same people might figure it out though when there is no more regular paycheck and they have figured out this industry over some time. Again, customers of the future.

I've been seeing lots of articles on the dates the economy has gone through some serious cycles and they seem to be exactly at the times when I was hopelessly unemployed. Once self employed I have never had a day off for the past 16 years. People are poor because they don't go to work whether that is acepting a 20 hour a week job or being unemployed so many months ever year.

People with there string of own businesses will support the show and spend what ever to come support the show. It has always been tight for everyone to elect to do this. Nothing has changed at all.

This economic scouring will weed out a few haunts too as the customers buying tickets is where all this theoretical cash flow comes from. If the haunt wasn't great, they might not come out. Still, they weren't great because they weren't spending any money to be great so again nothing different in the haunt market.

Unfortunately logic would say to only deal with the qualified buyers and somehow make the business engaged in not cost any money or be a drag on what has to be done to make money in a positive way. It is going to be like that with out having to make up any new rules. The tight rope is that the real work and income will come from those who could care less what the economy is doing. They are going about business as usual and the work they are doing to make the money to begin with are somewhat diversified over a range essencial services without so many great big contract jobs. Survivor level. They have been around for years and there is somewhat of a routine to not disrupt in order to have business as usual.

Right now the big opportunity is that having a dedication to actually having an inventory of stuff to work from will rule. Those that will be making things off of a deposit only are going to fail or really weren't serious enough to be involved in what ever business.

Even if it appears that 50% was chopped out attendance wise, it is still probably what it really was anyhow with dedicated buyers. It was a success anyhow! There may not have been the out of control fluff of the past but, it was still happening. Because the financial structure came from many people with multiple incomes it simply illustrates who showed up are the geniuses that have figured out how the economy works long term. The whole customer base is people that have figured out how to network themselves out to many sectors of "jobs" to keep doing what they want to do.

The illusions of activity might be taken away but the core business will still be there in St. Louis. It is simply a total reset of what is crap, what is so much noise and not. Nothing to worry about. In fact even being judged from outside, because the money to support this tradeshow comes from the wide common ground, it will maybe out produce so many other shows it could be compared to and prove once and for all that it is a stand alone asset to Transworld. Not something some Trends research can predetermine.

This is the perfect time for everyone to support the show to the best of their capabilities because, it will be noticed as a steadfast industry in good times and bad.