Our commercial team attended the Remodeling Show/DeckExpo exhibition last week in Chicago. The event was held at Navy Pier on
October 1-2. Educational sessions began on September 30 and ran through the end
of the show. This exhibition is held
annually and the pattern lately has been to alternate shows between Baltimore
and Chicago. For whatever reason, the Baltimore show tends to be the bigger of
the two, but there was decent traffic throughout the opening day of the show,
which was when we visited.
The show was characterized by a lack of new products. There
were several items that had been introduced last year, but truly new offerings
were hard to come by. For us, visiting the show was very worthwhile because we
were able to talk to many of our customers in one place at one time, and our
meetings with them were productive.
One item of note was the change of venue from the McCormick
Place site to Navy Pier. The Pier has a small exposition center in a
building farthest from the shore and it was busy throughout our visit. There
were several nice restaurants right on Navy Pier, which made it an ideal locale
for business lunches and dinners. Because McCormick Place is so big, it is
isolated from the walkable part of Chicago, so it’s opportunities for on-site
dining and other attractions is not nearly as great as what the Navy Pier had
to offer.
All of the major players in the decking industry exhibited
along with some of the producers of fencing, windows, roofing and cladding. The
overall outlook on the industry seemed to be optimistic but guarded. It’s as if
those in the building industry aren’t quite sure what to expect of the economy
or the sector as a whole. Some of this is understandable, since the building
industry was the one hardest hit over the last decade, so even when it’s easy
for other industries to feel bullish, producers of building products are
approaching the future with caution.
We’ll be anxious to see what the industry as a whole sees as
their future when we visit the International Builder’s Show in January. In the
meantime, if you’d like to give your opinion on the Remodeler’s Show/Deck Expo
or comment on the state of the industry as a whole, please feel free to leave
us a comment so we can continue the conversation.
Herman Volkening
Account Manager, Americhem, Inc.
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