Running a Shop

ASRW: Feedback prompted NACE move to Orlando

Jan. 6, 2011

Jan. 6, 2011--In response to feedback from participants, ASRW announced Thursday it will move NACE and CARS to Orlando, Fla. in 2011, starting a rotating location schedule that will take the event to different areas of the country.

The 2011 event will be held Oct. 6-8 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando with education starting on Wednesday, Oct. 5. This will also return the show to a Thursday to Saturday date pattern. ASRW plans to rotate locations between the eastern, midwestern and western areas of the country. ASA, which sponsors the event, said that rotating it is intended to attract new attendees, as well as those who have not been attending in previous years. The location for 2012 is yet to be determined, but ASRW has identified Indianapolis, Chicago, New Orleans and San Antonio as strong possibilities based on feedback from attendees, exhibitors and prospects in a series of surveys, said Shelby Hausler, a spokeswoman for NACE and CARS. The results of those surveys led to the new strategy of rotating the event. "The surveys elicited much more of a response than we were expecting and we are grateful to everyone who took the time to respond," said Ron Pyle, president of the ASA. "We spent weeks pouring through all the feedback we received from the surveys to grasp what the industry wanted from this show, starting with the location, days of the week, and time of the year." ASRW co-located in Las Vegas with SEMA from 2003 to 2009, but decided to go back to having its own event in 2010, when it ran from Oct. 10-13 in Las Vegas. SEMA was held Nov. 2-5 in Las Vegas, meaning that people who wanted to attend both events had to travel to Las Vegas twice in less than one month. Attendance at NACE that year was down more than 25 percent. Hausler said the goal is always to have better attendance at the event than the previous year, but projections for 2011 aren't set because of the new setup. She said there are no plans to merge the event with SEMA again.