Lights, Action, Vegas! – Lightfair International
Lights, Action, Vegas! – Lightfair International
Angie Kellen, Director, Client Services, Open Sky Communications
Recently, I was supporting a client at the Lightfair International (LFI) tradeshow in Las Vegas. It was the first in-person tradeshow and conference I attended since COVID-19 forced events to go completely virtual. Did I have any worries? Sure. But I was more concerned with getting into ‘Tradeshow Mode’ after the long time between in-person events than contracting COVID. I’ll share more on this later. As for LFI, were the number of exhibitors and attendees equal to pre-COVID events? No. However, I found the energy level and general enthusiasm to be much higher than the LFI events I attended pre-COVID. In this blog, I will lightly re-cap the LFI tradeshow and conference as well as share my personal experiences and feelings of returning to the tradeshow floor, in person.
If you’re not familiar with LFI, it’s the world’s largest annual architectural and commercial lighting trade show and conference. The event is owned by the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) and the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES). They chose to host the event this year in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s new state-of-the-art West Hall, which is an impressive and worthy venue for announcements on the newest innovations in lighting. Below is a photo of the outside of the building. As you can see, there is a lot of glass and being in the hot desert climate, I was wondering if we would get that ‘I’m-in-a-glass-box-in-over-100-degree-heat’ feeling. I am happy to report that I did not!
(Photo of the state-of-the-art West Hall from the Las Vegas Convention Center website)
Below is what you see when you enter the building. The two-story LED billboard greets you with animation and very vibrant colors. Fitting for a LED lighting event! For that matter, so is all of Las Vegas. As you can see, the glass provides a ton of natural light. The organizers surely recognized the West Hall’s ‘Daylighting’ building strategy and no doubt it played a part in the decision to host the event there. Perhaps this too helped with the good energy and excitement for the show. In the end, the Daylighting benefits seemed to work to everyone’s advantage. What is equally impressive was the temperature control of this large space. I had to travel back and forth between the meeting room and the exhibit floor many times throughout the day and I was relieved that I was NOT a ‘Sweaty Betty’ for my press meetings.
(Photo of the state-of-the-art West Hall interior from the Las Vegas Convention Center website)
Like every industry, the road to recovery from the pandemic continues for the lighting industry. LFI 2021 was an in-person event held at the Javits Center in New York. The organizers for this year’s LFI note that it is more than double the size of last year’s event with 10,000 actual attendees from the 11,000 registered and over 300 exhibitors in four pavilions: The Collective, Design, Outdoor and Smart. While everything was on one floor and in one exhibit hall, it was a much more intimate experience from pre-COVID LFI events, which have been on multiple levels and in various buildings. I was curious as to the number of exhibitors compared to the 2021 event versus the 2022 event. Below from the LFI website, I have provided the exhibitor floor plan for both the 2021 and 2022 events. The shaded areas mark the various pavilions. Indeed, the number of 2022 exhibitors are about double from the year before.
(Lightfair International 2021 Exhibitor Floor Plan from the Lightfair International website)
(Lightfair International 2022 Exhibitor Floor Plan from the Lightfair International website)
One of those exhibitors was my client, NexGen Power Systems. NexGen is the only company that has a commercially viable power system based on a 3D GaN-on-GaN chip technology. For the first time at LFI, NexGen provided a demo of its Vertical GaNTM power technology that is integrated into its HeliosTM LED power module. Truly a technology that is disrupting the LED lighting market. I mention this not to promote my client, but to show an example of the big industry news that was found at LFI. One of the largest companies in the lighting space, GE Current, a Daintree company, made a big splash at LFI with Hubbell Lighting announcing that they have come together to form CurrentTM. They launched a new logo and branding campaign around the company’s new name. Clearly the recovery is underway as we are seeing exhibitors continue to rely on tradeshows to be relevant launch points for their news and products as they did pre-COVID.
(NexGen Power Systems booth at Lightfair International 2022)
I’m not trying to paint a rosy picture of the lighting industry’s recovery as if we are back to pre-pandemic levels. Rather, it is a slow recovery, very slow. It was noticeable that some large companies were missing from the LFI exhibitor’s roster, including Acuity Brands, Lumenpulse and Lutron, to name a few. I asked friends and some of the media their opinion on why they thought some of the big companies did not exhibit. Responses generally fell into a few categories: “they may be waiting to see if the event is well attended and will make a big splash at the 2023 LFI” and “some companies sent their employees, but did not exhibit, kind of an investigation tactic” to “perhaps they are experiencing a greater financial struggle from the pandemic.” These comments are clearly speculation and the most-often received responses. But if the recovery is to continue, the industry will need the large companies to exhibit and support tradeshows like LFI, which supports the industry associations like IES and IALD. There is an ecosystem that exists and if the large companies are not there to draw in the lighting agents, designers, specifiers and distributors, then the event will lose its value to the industry.
(Lightfair International 2022 Show Floor image from Lightfair International’s website)
I heard from many enthusiastic LFI attendees and exhibitors about how much they loved having fewer people to shuffle through and that it allowed them to spend more time and engage in more meaningful conversations with new and old friends, potential customers, etc. Lightfair International 2023 will be held in New York. While the smallness of this event was nice, my hope is that it can double again in number of exhibitors and attendees from this year’s event to keep the lighting industry strong and growing.
As I mentioned earlier, my concern with attending my first in-person event was my ability to get into ‘Tradeshow Mode.’ It’s like a PR person’s ‘Beast Mode’! Every PR person knows that supporting clients at a tradeshow takes great organization, schedule management, lots of printouts that go with you everywhere, the ability to think on your feet and high energy to ensure your client is properly prepped and successful in their editor meetings. After not having to be in this mode for two years, I was afraid I would be rusty. Well, I am happy to report that I fell right into step and really enjoyed the whole event from the editor meetings to checking out the various booths, etc. Those Pilates classes proved to be a good idea too as I didn’t have the usual foot and back aches.
There was an air of excitement in and around the tradeshow. I feel this was due, in part, to the option of wearing a face mask. In my observations, about 1% of the attendees and exhibitors wore a mask. With the ability to see most everyone’s full face, it seems that people really enjoyed the added interpersonal connection that they have been missing from virtual conferences. Let’s hope that we can continue to safely gather and continue this experience at future events. Like all in-person events, it was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and make new ones. LFI highlighted those critical baby steps that are part of the lighting industry’s slow march to recovery from the pandemic. Also, did I mention that it rained on the second day of the tradeshow? How odd and fortunate to actually see rain in the desert. I barely get to see rain here in California. Maybe I should have visited the craps table. With that, and the fact that I am half Irish and rain is a lucky sign, I am hoping that this luck is present for the 2023 LFI in New York and it receives all the support needed to further the lighting industry’s continued march toward recovery.
(Photo: Statue of Liberty from the Lightfair International website)