Twenty-five years after starting his company inside the garage of his home with no money and four young mouths to feed, Ron Mueller and Image Display Inc. were “flying high” at the beginning of this year.
Mueller’s small St. Charles business, which rents and sets up exhibits at trade shows across the country, was fully booked for 2020, with at least 50 events scheduled at conference centers, including McCormick Place in Chicago.
But as you can imagine, COVID-19 has brought the trade show industry to a screeching halt, a tragedy I’ve seen play out personally, as several long-time family friends are in the industry.
“We were literally setting up exhibits at shows and were told to take them down and get the hell out,” recalls 63-year-old Mueller of that day in March when states across the country began to close down. “Our trucks had to turn around and come back. And even though we still had to pay the drivers, our customers did not pay us.”
While some companies are rescheduling for next year with the hopes a vaccine is on the horizon and these trade shows can resume with some sort of normalcy, many experts – and common sense – say it could be a year or even longer before people are comfortable jumping on planes, checking into hotels, meeting for dinner and then heading into crowded convention centers.
And so, for the past seven months, Mueller is like many other people in this once-thriving industry: He’s trying to keep busy enough around the house that sleep will come easy and give him a temporary reprieve from worrying about the future.
While certainly restaurants, bars and entertainment venues have taken a financial punch to the gut, the trade show industry, where companies showcase their latest and greatest products and services, is a huge but often overlooked victim of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Center for Exhibition Research, there were about 9,400 business-to-business trade shows in the U.S. in 2019, contributing $101 billion to the nation’s economy, with other sources putting that number closer to 13,000 such events.
“Look around … there is nothing in your office or house,” noted Mueller, “from flat-screens to toothbrushes to doctor chairs and Dollar Store items, that did not originate from one of those shows.”
And even though some companies are trying to hang on with online events – the National Hardware Show scheduled for May in Las Vegas became a virtual October affair – the experience is just not the same, said Mueller, adding that few people “will buy an expensive piece of equipment without first getting their hands on it.”
While Mueller says he’s in decent position to weather the COVID storm, the shutdown is creating havoc in the industry – from bankruptcies to suicides.
One of our family friends, after 35 years building a company that coordinates trade show conventions, had planned to retire and sell the DuPage business for around $1 million next year.
Now, he tells us, it’s worth nothing.
And the worst could be yet to come, says Mueller, noting the ripple affect of the shutdown that not only impacts trucking, travel, hotels and restaurants but also laborers and businesses that supply everything from the catered food to the forklifts and generators for trade shows.
“Even when things get going, it’s going to be a mess,” he added, because so many people had no choice but to move on and find employment in other places.
Like others watching their businesses struggle for survival, Mueller tries to understand the logic behind rules that allow hundreds of people to shop next to each other in big box stores but prohibits “smart business folks from safely attending closed and regulated” professional shows.
“These people are not riding on each other’s shoulders,” he said. “They wear masks, they follow rules, they are in and out” of show halls that already must be certified for cleanliness and proper air filtration.
From “Pelosi and Trump fighting over money” to the failure of local officials “to get word out” about the $92 million federal CARES package available to Kane County, Mueller is more than a little frustrated at the way government leaders have responded to the needs of small business owners.
The COVID-19 PPE grant he received earlier in the year, said Mueller, “quickly ran out,” and since then he’s not only furloughed staff but downsized his space, which meant throwing out more than $100,000 in custom rental equipment.
“Welcome to our world,” he said. “There’s not an owner or salesperson in this industry I’ve talked to who does not wake up every morning, look in the mirror and ask why?”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
