Comdex a tough sell for LV economic developers

Kevin Ferguson

Friday, Nov. 16, 2001 | 10:38 a.m.

City of Las Vegas business recruiter Doug Lein gets frustrated when people ask him where the bathroom is.

"I get that a lot," Lein said as he manned his 10-by-10 foot booth inside the west entrance of the Las Vegas Convention Center during the giant Comdex tech trade show this week.

For anyone who browses the literature on his table, it should be clear that he's promoting Las Vegas as a favorable place for tech businesses to call home.

He says the confusion may be that his booth is in a convention lobby, a high traffic area, but nonetheless, not on the exhibit floor.

That's because the economic development division for the city of Las Vegas gets the space for free. If it wanted to be on the exhibit floor, the city would have to cough up more than $5,700.

He says that's too much for the city's budget, especially when the best way to recruit is too seek out tech chief executives in the convention center meeting rooms.

The executives, he says, are rarely found walking the exhibit floor.

Lein and other local officials who aim to diversify Southern Nevada's tourism- dominated economy say Comdex is not the best environment for such efforts, even though thousands of tech executives are crammed into the convention center for five days.

"(Comdex) attracts more sales people than company owners," said Somer Hollingsworth, chief executive of the Nevada Development Authority.

Bob Shriver, executive director of Nevada's Commission on Economic Development, echoed similar sentiments. Neither attended the trade show this year.

Hollingsworth said last week that NDA Vice President Clinton Pope would likely attend Comdex, but would not man a booth.

Although Lein also believes Comdex is full of more sales people than company decision-makers, he still appeared upbeat Thursday about the trade show's recruitment potential as he talked to booth visitors.

"If we don't (recruit at Comdex) we may miss the next 1,000-person employer that's looking to relocate somewhere," he said.

Lein said he talked to three quality companies that were "real good prospects."

"That means they are looking to relocate somewhere in the Southwest within a year's time, and have narrowed the search down to a short list of cities," he said.

Lein didn't want to disclose the names of the companies, just yet. However, he said one is a Dallas-based company that manages technology data centers, or telco hotels. Another makes hardware components for the security industry and the third is a software developer.

Lein said he handed out about 115 packets to booth visitors this year compared to 250 last year. He said the decline was partly because the show's attendance was down.

This year's visitor turnout and rented exhibit space was down almost 50 percent from last year, said Rick Moore, spokesman for Key3Media, the Los Angeles-based firm that runs Comdex.

He said Thursday the visitor count was between 100,000 to 125,000. That compares to about 210,000 visitors last year. The trade show used 650,000 square feet of exhibit floor space this year compared to about 1 million in 2000.

Lein said the recruitment process at Comdex is difficult and could be frustrating because it may take several months or even years before the results are seen.

"Some company I talk to today may put the (material) in its 'someday' file, and call a year later," he said.

One Comdex business Lein recruited to Las Vegas at a past show is Advance Cutting & Machinery, formerly of Salt Lake City.

The company, which manufactured automotive parts, later merged with Las Vegas-based Lew Composites, a maker of bicycle parts.