ENTECH 2019 MOVES – NEW DATA RELEASED

Australia’s one day touring AV roadshow will move out of February and run wholly during March 2019. The move helps distributor staff attending the now enormous ISE show in Amsterdam which runs across the start of February; and also some production industry trade who are very busy.

Despite ENTECH expanding internationally, the Australian flagship roadshow will not change format, and remains space-limited.

Registration data from the 2018 Roadshow shows annual expenditure of A$223 million by attendees, roughly in line with the sector total of just under A$400 million (estimated by CX Magazine).

Interestingly, ENTECH attendees are mainly in Permanent employment (67%) with casuals making up just 7%. Most of the 9% ‘other’ report as self employed.

2008 was the first year ENTECH sought detailed data from each attendee, with four question sets that also included sector. Not surprisingly most identified as working in ‘AV’, with breakdowns for ‘Sound’ and ‘Lighting’ running fairly close.

The types of workplace data was dominated by ‘Other’, which shows the question needed more subsets. Organisers were impressed at the detail shared by the attendees – the data set used here was from pre-registrations up to February 11 and cover 933 people. Subsequent data (this story was posted on February 14) further confirms the numbers.

Industry data is notoriously hard to source since the entertainment technology industry is relatively small, with just one peak industry body – ACETA – which is relatively new to data collection. ENTECH has become a valuable source of data, but needs to walk a fine line between over burdening the time poor visitor while retaining their trust that the data will be used properly and not inflated.

Data inflation is a device some trade show organisers willingly employ to over-stimulate demand for their product – which is trade show space. It can create unreal expectations amongst exhibitors and also suppliers who then demand unrealistic sales.

For 2019 ENTECH expands to Canada, with additional USA Roadshows following the inaugural 2018 dates across the mid-south region. ENTECH also tours New Zealand this winter (2018) and returns there two years later in 2020.

Further afield ENTECH is seeking partners for European Roadshows commencing in 2019.