Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Q&A: Steve Moster

steve_moster

Justin M. Bowen

Steve Moster, president of Global Experience Specialists, is working with his team to set up the massive ConExpo-Con/Agg trade show that fills 4.6 million square feet of exhibit space.

If you drive past the Las Vegas Convention Center this week, you’ll see that a large mechanical forest has grown in the parking lot.

It’s a display of cranes for ConExpo-Con/Agg, a construction industry trade show that is expected to bring 140,000 people to Las Vegas. One reason the show is so big is that it only happens in Las Vegas once every three years.

In addition to drawing huge numbers, it also will cover a lot of ground — 4.6 million square feet of exhibits, or 68 football fields, with displays weighing 150 million pounds, or the weight of more than 150 Boeing 747 jets.

Managing the show is Global Experience Specialists, a Las Vegas-based subsidiary of Viad Corp. of Phoenix. GES is headed by Steve Moster, who was appointed president Nov. 1.

Moster’s team includes 500 local employees, although the company issued 4,000 W-2 forms to contracted workers.

Moster talked with In Business Las Vegas about the logistics of putting together a major trade show, how technology is changing the industry and GES’ other business involving Hollywood movie studios:

IBLV: Let’s start with this month’s big event — the opening of the ConExpo-Con/Agg trade show. When did preparations for that show begin?

Moster: The event takes place in Las Vegas once every three years. The planning for it actually begins as soon as the previous show ends. The actual move-in, when equipment starts to show up, is about three weeks to a month before, so right now, we are in the execution phase of bringing in equipment and setting it up.

There must be some logistical challenges that are a part of that. Who’s the traffic cop on this beat?

That’s our expertise. Our Las Vegas operation where the show is held is the one that manages all the logistics. If you think about it, we have roughly 2,000 exhibitors, all bringing equipment from various parts of the world because it’s an international event. Our team in Las Vegas plans when certain equipment arrives and how it’s installed. They’re responsible for every part of the execution. They are, essentially, your traffic cops.

What’s the farthest point from which exhibitors are coming?

You name it, we have visitors coming in from there — Asia, Europe, around the world.

With a show of that size and scope, what sets ConExpo apart from other events that you do in Las Vegas?

There are a couple of differentiating parts to ConExpo. It’s a nonannual event, only happening once every three years which is unusual for the trade show and convention industry. No. 2, the size and scope of the work: ConExpo will be about 4 million gross square feet, which is basically the size of 68 football fields. So just the overall scale and size of the event are far larger than a lot of other events.

What are the biggest challenges in putting together a show like this?

The size is the complicating factor. The type of the equipment coming in is actually built here on-site. For instance, the cranes that will come in and are being installed right now. A single crane will come in 30 trailers of pieces and is being assembled in the Gold Lot as we speak. It’s not only the size, because we have other shows that are as large, but it’s the complexity of what is being displayed. It is the premier show for this kind of equipment and a lot of it is assembled on-site. So that adds to the complexity. A third component is the international part of it.

Specifically, what are GES’ responsibilities for the show?

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers is the organizer that it putting on the event, and we work very closely with AEM in order to produce the event. Our responsibility is as the official service contractor. That means we are responsible for when the equipment or the freight comes to Las Vegas. We’re responsible for getting it to the booth or where they’re going to display that product. We’re responsible for getting it from the trucks to that location. We’re also responsible for the electrical end, in order to power these booths and the equipment that’s out there. We’re responsible for the look and the feel of the show, so all the graphics and the marketing messages that come across from AEM to its audience, which are the buyers as well as the exhibitors. In addition, we work directly with the exhibitors that come and in some instances, we will design and fabricate the exhibit they are using to display their products.

What are your responsibilities once the show begins?

Our work does die down dramatically once the show opens. We’re in the background from an electrical perspective to make sure there are no issues. There are changes that happen overnight that you may or may not notice. Sometimes an exhibitor may want to move a piece of freight or a piece of equipment and we’re responsible for that. So there are subtle changes that happen during the show as well as being there from a maintenance perspective. The bulk of our work comes in the month before the show, getting ready for it and in the couple of weeks we have to take down all of the equipment and components and have them sent out.

Once the show ends, what happens to all the materials that are used?

It’s all in reverse. There’s a disassembling of all the equipment, the exhibits, the booths. All the products, all the pamphlets have to be boxed or crated and then sent back to the various destinations. There’s just as much coordination that happens at the end of the show as there is leading up to the show itself.

Does the breakdown take less time?

It does take less time. We’ll spend about a month on the installation and it’s two to three weeks taking it out. And then we start planning the next show immediately. The planning that goes into it is significant. It’s not just the logistical component of it, but we have to work through how well the show did, how we managed the traffic flow, how we used certain buildings, how we managed the electrical uses. There’s a fair amount of planning in the three years leading up to it.

Some of the materials used are recycled, right?

Out of our Las Vegas facility, 55 percent of all of our waste material is recycled. We have a fantastic partnership here in Las Vegas as well as our other cities.

ConExpo is huge. What other major shows in Las Vegas are contracted with GES?

We have the Consumer Electronics Show, which we do every year. It’s probably the second-largest annual show. We also will do (International Council of Shopping Centers) in May. We do the International Sign Expo and MAGIC (Men’s Apparel Guild in California) as well. We have a good breadth of marquee trade shows and conventions in Las Vegas and across the United States.

Who is your biggest competition and how does GES stack up against it?

There’s a handful of general service contractors that could be viewed as competitors in this arena. We have other competitors in other areas. Our business is not just the trade show and convention component of it. We’re really a face-to-face marketing agency. We’ve been recognized as one of the top 50 for the work that we’ve done. There are a number of marketing channels we service, the trade show and convention component, there are museums and exhibitions. We work with Warner Bros. on “Harry Potter” and Disney/Walden on “Narnia,” on branding elements in exhibitions. We do mobile marketing and retail channels so we will be responsible for permanent installations in a shopping center or temporary facilities like kiosks. So we handle a number of different channels as a face-to-face marketer. Our competition varies by segment. Specifically within the trade show and convention channel there are a number of service contractors that we compete with.

Such as?

One is the Freeman Cos. Another is Champion Exposition (Services). There are smaller ones that are a little more regional.

Are you the largest among them?

We are one of the largest. There are parts of our business that no one else is in. In some respects, you’d be comparing apples and oranges. We are the only contractor that does this type of work internationally. Not only am I in the U.S., but I have offices throughout Canada, the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Europe.

In Las Vegas, I think most people have heard of GES and Freeman. What’s your relationship with them? Are you big rivals or friendly competitors in this market?

It’s a cooperative relationship. We’re both there to service our clients, and we support each other from time to time. The service contractor industry is a small one and we work well together in order to make each other successful.

What trends are you seeing in the exposition market?

I’m happy to say that for the third and fourth quarter of last year, the trend was that shows were growing. By that, I mean they’re growing in terms of their attendance count, in terms of their exhibitor count and the square footage of the shows. It’s the first time we’ve really seen growth in this industry for several months. It was nice to see that growth happening in the third and fourth quarter and we continue to see that through the first portion of 2011.

Most tourism-oriented businesses view 2007 and 2008 as the economic high-water mark. Was that the case for GES?

Yes, 2008 was a large year for us. And that was the last year ConExpo was here as well. If you look at our results from 2008, the economy was still roaring ahead, we had some nonannual shows that happened that year and that helped boost the revenue as well. That, to me, was a high-water mark. In 2009 and 2010, we saw the impact of the economic slowdown and recession. What encourages me is that we started seeing things grow in the second half of 2010. That’s not to say that they are back to where we were in 2008, but it’s a positive sign.

Was there a defining moment that led to the realization that things were going badly?

In our business we get to see shows that happen every month across the United States and around the world. We also see them across a number of different industries. We see a snapshot view into every type of industry across the globe so we started seeing trends in late 2008, early 2009 where the attendees and the exhibitors in certain industries were not showing up. There was less space, less exhibitors and less attendees. That’s when we knew. The world economy was going through the same thing at the same time.

From your vantage point, you could probably see which industries were getting hurt the worst by the recession.

We do. We see a number of different industries, from health care to transportation to electronics or retail. You can see how those events track. These trade shows are a snapshot of what’s happening in the economy. The events are taking place to either bring buyers and sellers together or to display product and get interest in products. So we’re able to see some of the interest out there and the spend that might be out there by just looking at what the buyer attendance is doing at the event.

Did any particular sector do better than another?

They all had their unique characteristics. I think every industry that we saw was impacted, some more than others. The health care industry was able to maintain its attendance and performance at events stronger than other industries. But every single one was impacted.

When was the bottom reached?

We started seeing the signs in the third quarter of 2010. We track all of our events and we do a lot of our events every year and sometimes we see them twice a year, depending on the event. So we track what’s happening with that event year over year. We saw the significant decline from 2008 to 2009. The first half of 2010, we continued to see the decline into the summer. That’s when the decline stopped and we were fortunate to see some very strong growth in the third and fourth quarter.

Based on your company’s projections, what’s the outlook for the industry?

We believe that we’ll continue to have modest growth in 2011. We’ve projected midsingle-digit (percentage) growth.

Is there anything you’re seeing that you didn’t expect?

As the industry has grown, it’s changed slightly. There’s some pent-up energy to come back to shows, but a fair amount of uncertainty about the economic situation that we’re in. We’ve had some great news about (national) unemployment numbers recently dropping down to 8.9 percent. But 8.9 percent is still significant. There’s some pent-up demand or pent-up energy around exhibitors coming back to events at the same scale they would have in the 2007-08 period. While we see them coming back, it’s not to the same size and scale as they did in 2008. But I believe they will come back.

How much of an effect do advancements in technology have on your business? I’ve heard a lot of advertising for technology that enables face-to-face meetings over the Internet.

Technology, obviously, plays a key role in what we do at GES and how we service our clients. At the Consumer Electronics Show, we equipped our service executive liaisons — GES employees that work with exhibitors to make sure that they have everything they need to participate at the event — with hand-held iPads. They were able to interface directly in real time with all the ordering history of that individual and all the invoice history. Every piece of information we knew about that customer was on that iPad. It’s a great way of taking what used to be a remote service, information that was stored on a laptop somewhere, and turned that into a mobility program and sent our employees out to the exhibitors to work with them.

So while advancements in technology may hurt you on one hand, you use it to your advantage on another.

Absolutely. If you look at the advantages we have from the technology perspective in our call center we have been recognized by J.D. Power & Associates for the third straight year. A lot of that has to do with the technology we have in place. We have a very advanced (customer relationship management) system that allows us to know many shows an individual goes to, where a customer is headed next, how many shows of ours is he going to and can I address his issues when he goes to CES and can I address his issues on shows he’s going to down the road for the third or fourth show he may be going to. You asked specifically about virtual events. I view virtual events as a great compliment to a trade show or a convention. I don’t view them as a competitive threat. What I see happening in the industry is organizers and contractors like GES are using virtual events to extend the life and the interaction of a show. They’ll use them in advance of an event to show products and to get people interested in what’s going to happen there and they’ll use them at the end to do the same thing after the event takes place. I see it as a nice complement to what’s happening today.

Explain what show rotation is and how it affects the bottom line for GES.

Show rotation simply means that an organizer may select different cities each time that show takes place. There are shows that happen every year in Las Vegas and then there are shows that rotate. This year it may be in Las Vegas, next year it would be in Orlando, the year after that it may be in Chicago. The cost of producing an exhibition varies by the city you’re going to. It varies on the airfare, it varies from the hotel, it varies from the labor in that city. So those are the things that have an impact on the total economics of a rotated show.

How does Las Vegas stack up compared with some of those other convention cities?

Las Vegas is a premier trade show and convention location. We have three of the top 10 facilities for trade shows and conventions right here (the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Sands Expo & Convention Center and the Mandalay Bay Convention Center). From a competitive standpoint, Las Vegas needs to focus on cost and service to the attendees and to the exhibitors that are there. The cost and service of the airfare, the hotels, the labor and the service that goes on top of that are critical for Las Vegas to maintain its competitive nature.

Besides the iPads, are there any other technological advancements that are changing the industry?

We’re taking on some unique things at GES. For the past 18 months, we have gone through and adopted the practices of Lean Six Sigma (a business management strategy). It’s essentially taking a look at business and trying to find ways to eliminate nonvalue-added activity and streamline the efficiencies of what we do. That’s really opened our eyes significantly and had a huge impact, not only on the operations in the U.S., but around the world. We’ve implemented it in the U.K., Europe, the Middle East, across Canada and the United States.

A few years ago, GES was embroiled in a labor dispute. How is the company’s relationship with labor today?

I think we have a good relationship with the labor unions. It’s a symbiotic relationship that we rely on them in order to do a large portion of what we do as a company and they rely on us as one of the primary employers, not only in Las Vegas but across every major trade show city. Locally, we work with the Teamsters Local 631, Carpenters Local 1780, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 357 and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 720.

GES is a subsidiary of Viad Corp. What other business is Viad involved with and what are some of GES’ sister companies?

There really are two parts of Viad’s business. The face-to-face marketing, which is GES, and the other portion is travel and recreation. We have a business that focuses on attractions and hotels inside or close to national parks throughout Canada and the U.S.

GES also has some relationships with motion picture companies. What does that include?

A lot of times people think of GES just as the trade show piece. But we’re also working with Walt Disney Co. and Pixar Animation Studios for their upcoming movie this summer, “Cars 2.” We have great relationships with some of the studios. For “Cars 2,” we’re actually building a promotional tour for them. We’re building 20 replica cars of the characters that are in the movie and then we’ll be organizing a tour that goes throughout the United States and the world over the next couple of years promoting that movie. We did the same thing for the original “Cars” several years ago. We also do the Warner Bros. “Harry Potter” exhibition with J.K. Rowling, working with the studio to produce that. We built a $5 million exhibition that tours throughout the world. So we worked with J.K. Rowling and the studio to design and build an interactive exhibition around the movie and the artifacts used in the movie. We use clips from the movie and make it interactive so as the audience goes through they feel like part of the movie and can see different components of it. We’re responsible for designing it, building it and coordinating it as it goes from location to location. It’ll stay at a science museum or natural history museum for three, four or five months at a time. It’s 14,000 square feet, and it’s about to open at Times Square in New York City.

Is Las Vegas on the tour?

As of right now, I don’t think Las Vegas is on the books. It just left Seattle. After Times Square, it will go to some international locations.

What other attractions is GES a part of?

We do some permanent installations so we’ve worked with Dr Pepper in Dallas Cowboys Stadium and have done a brand marketing experience that we’ve designed and built within the stadium. What I want to get across is that while we’re known for doing conventions, we also do some pretty amazing stuff across all marketing channels. We’re one of the largest face-to-face marketing agencies out there and have been recognized in the Ad Age Top 100.

Don’t you build some of the large advertising displays that are on the exterior of casino buildings?

We do things like that primarily tied to conventions and exhibitions that come through.

The face-to-face marketing includes companies around the world. Where else are you located?

GES is in every major convention center in the United States. There are nine offices throughout Canada. We recently opened a Vancouver, British Columbia, office. We have six offices throughout the U.K. and we have offices in Europe and the Middle East, in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

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