ICSC Las Vegas December Show – Brian’s Review
For the first time in 18 months, ICSC hosted a live event in my home city of Las Vegas. That said, there’s a lot to unpack. Let’s break it down into segments.
ICSC Name Change
During the 18-month layoff, ICSC had an identity crisis and decided, after 65 years in existence, to change its acronym’s letter’s meaning from:
(I)NTERNATIONAL (C)OUNCIL OF (S)HOPPINC (C)ENTERS -to- (I)NNOVATING (C)OMMERCE (S)ERVING (C)OMMUNITIES
Maybe, at some point in the distant future I’ll remember the new meaning of those four letters. But I can’t seem to remember even the “I” at this point, let alone the “C-S-C”. For those old enough to remember Coca-Cola had one of these identity crises in the 1980’s and re-invented itself with “New Coke”. Nobody liked it, so after plummeting sales, they came out with the new “Coke Classic” and order was restored. Come on ICSC, you can’t be that afraid of the internet. Shopping centers still matter…
Convention Center (New!)
Part of the reason we (Las Vegas) got the Raiders (currently tanking), and their new Death Star stadium is because the city needed more convention space but didn’t have a budget to build it. So, there was a special vote to build the stadium and the new convention digs under a special hotel tax, which passed and ‘voila’, new space!
It was really nice, though everyone tried going to the old convention center and found out that the National Finals Rodeo was in town (250,000 cowboys and cowgirls in attendance – Yee-Haw!), and that the ‘regular’ convention center was running an event called Cowboy Christmas https://www.nfrexperience.com/cowboychristmas/ , which is actually an amazing event. I think we’ll be back in the ‘old’ space for the May show, but that is TBD.
Exhibitors/Vaccines/Omicron/Tesla Tunnel
I had the privilege of planning a booth as an exhibitor for the Retail Brokers Network (RBN) this year, as well as a cocktail party and it was kind of a nightmare. We couldn’t get anyone in our 750+ member network to commit to the event. Everyone was on the fence to ‘wait and see’ what would happen with COVID restrictions, the next pandemic wave, and “maybe I’ll just wait until May 2022”, etc.. Then ICSC went with a vaccine mandate (no masks, which was really nice) which kept people away, then a new Omicron variant came out. We wound up dramatically downsizing our booth, but then 100+ RBN members showed up! It was tight, but all was good. Everyone kind of rolled with it.
My story is echoed by many other exhibitors. Also, a lot of folks decided to set up shop at some of the neighboring (and sometimes not so neighboring) casinos to hold court/meetings. Honestly, I am not a fan of this. Sure, it’s convenient to have everyone come to you in your own comfortable setting, but on the other side of that, jockeying between convention center meetings and casinos is a nightmare. I hope ICSC can find a way to invite some of the bigger groups back into its show so we’ll all be under one roof again.
Oh, you can now jump in a Tesla and get whisked away in an underground tunnel to take you from one hall to the next in seconds! So cool!!! You can also get to the Wynn and Resorts World, with many more stops being added in the near future.
Number of attendees – and please stop comparing numbers to the May ICSC!
Remember, this show was supposed to be in NYC. December is always in NYC. But, since NYC is in NYC, ICSC decided to pull the trigger and do a show where they could actually pull it off (thank you ICSC) which is why it was here in Las Vegas.
The NYC show draws around 12,000 vs. the May LV show which draws 30,000+. Accordingly, the numbers were more in line with NYC. ICSC claims 10,000 attendees to this show. I’d say those seemed a little high from the crowds in the convention center. It seemed like +/- 7,000 at its peak in the convention hall, partly because there were so many offsite meetings pulling people in all directions. The May show will be much closer to its normal attendee size.
Was it a good show? Absolutely!
Different, but good nonetheless. First of all, there were a ton of people I haven’t seen in the last 18 months. It was great to see actual faces and hear actual voices instead of the virtual world we’ve been subjected to. It had a reunion quality to it. Also, I didn’t really expect to have a lot of productive meetings, but I did. Very much so. Most of the meetings occurred on Monday as most everyone tried to cram everything into the first day, and then bailed on Tuesday (not all, but a lot). All told I personally had 15 meetings in 7 different locations (again, can we please all try to play nice and agree to keep to the convention center?!!!), plus a market tour. Whew…
A few months ago when this convention was announced, I wasn’t sure if I’d have a single meaningful meeting scheduled for the event, let alone productive ones. A colleague of mine said she felt that felt that the folks that showed up for this show were the 20% in the 80/20 rule. I’m not sure that I agree, as there are lots of folks that have lots of different reasons (health and otherwise) that couldn’t commit to this particular show. That said, you have 5 months to prepare for the May show. You may want to find a way not to miss that one.