Big electronics manufacturer pulls out of Vegas Consumer Electronics Show

Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2000 | 10:25 a.m.

Thomson Multimedia Inc., one of the world's largest consumer electronics producers, is pulling out of the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

A spokesman said the producer of RCA products will have its own exhibition during the show at convention facilities at the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino instead.

Dave Arland, a spokesman for RCA and Thomson, a French company that has its U.S. headquarters in Indianapolis, said the decision was a cost-cutting move.

"We had our customers come to us and say, 'Why are you showing these products at the show?' " Arland said. "The Radio Shacks and Kmarts of the world have already made their product buying decisions by the time the show opens. When you hear that more than three times, you start to listen."

He explained that when CES first opened its doors, it was the leading showcase for new consumer electronics products and that the January show date gave companies a stage on which to promote products that would be on store shelves that year. Now, Arland said, products are being introduced year round, can be distributed faster and the January show date isn't as significant.

Arland said the expense was in transporting hundreds of products to Las Vegas and staffing the show, which he said took several hundred employees shuttled in throughout the event. Thomson had its own hospitality room at the Las Vegas Convention Center after removing itself from the trade show floor two years ago. But for the 2001 CES, the company decided to cut all ties.

For years, Thomson has been a CES staple, usually inviting vendors and the media to a product presentation the night before the official kickoff of the show. For 2001, the company has rented one of two ballrooms at Mandalay Bay for the show, which runs Jan. 6-9.

A spokeswoman for the show said Thomson would be missed, but producers already have sold the company's area and have nearly sold out the show's booth space.

Lisa Fasold, director of communications for the Arlington, Va.-based Consumer Electronics Association, producers of CES, said the 1.1 million square feet of exhibition space occupied by 1,500 companies is ahead of last year's pace.

"Thomson is one of our biggest members, so we did everything we could to keep them on site," Fasold said. "We have all the other major AV (audio-visual) companies exhibiting, so I think it hurts Thomson a lot more than it hurts CES."

Arland said meetings are being set up in advance with vendors who will be attending CES. But Fasold said Thomson won't be able to advertise in any CES literature or at any of the four show venues -- the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Hilton, the Riviera hotel-casino and the Alexis Park Hotel.

In addition to filling space in those facilities, the show will have exhibits in tents in the parking lot across Paradise Road from the Convention Center.

CES was one of the catalysts in the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority's bid to expand. The 1.3 million-square-foot South Hall expansion is expected to be completed in time for CES' 2002 show. In the meantime, show organizers opted against conducting the show at the Sands Expo Center when its contract ended.

CES' complaint that the Sands Expo Center exhibit rate was too high touched off a philosophical debate between Sheldon Adelson, owner of the Sands Expo Center and his adjacent Venetian hotel-casino, and the LVCVA over whether the LVCVA should be allowed to offer convention space subsidized by room tax money and compete against local convention venues.

The battle escalated into a legal fight, ultimately won by the LVCVA, but resulting in a delay in construction on the expansion in 1999.