The Craft & Hobby Association announced Wednesday that the CHA Summer trade show and conference will move from its traditional home in Chicago to Las Vegas for 2013.
Las Vegas (Photo by Glenn Pinkerton – Courtesy of Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority)
The move, announced in an email sent to CHA members from president Andrej Suskavcevic, takes the CHA Summer show on only its second trip out of the Chicago area in its decades long history. The first departure was a widely-panned experiment in Orlando in the summer of 2009. A spokesperson for CHA told Scrapbook Update that Las Vegas will not be the summer show’s new permanent home, but that the show’s location will actually rotate each year from now on.
The CHA Summer 2013 will take place from July 22nd to 25th, 2013. No specific location to host the event within Las Vegas has been announced.
Las Vegas is the country’s number one trade show destination. According to the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, over 4.8 million people attended over 19,000 conventions in Las Vegas last year. Las Vegas is known among convention attendees for its entertainment options and affordable casino hotel rooms – the average price for one of the 150,000 hotel rooms in the city is $105, with many priced well below that.
The new location in Las Vegas also comes with some changes to the event’s pricing.
Members will get into the trade show floor free (currently they pay $25 per show pass). Non-member buyers will pay $200 for admission to the show floor, while non-member suppliers will pay $400. These prices are in line with the lowest level membership price for those categories, making it actually a better value to just join CHA and get all the membership benefits plus the show for free if you fall into that level of membership pricing and will be attending the show (which may be the association’s purpose in setting the pricing this way).
Business seminars will also be included in the base admission. However, workshops, which are currently included in the price of the show pass, will need to be purchased on an ala-carte basis at CHA Summer 2013. Members will receive “preferred pricing”, according to CHA. Workshop scheduling will not overlap with trade show hours.
The educational focus of the show will be “innovation and building relationships.”
As was hinted at in the mention of the workshop schedule, the show’s schedule is getting a makeover as well. Monday the 22nd will be an education day. The 23rd thru 25th will be trade show days, with the following hours:
Tuesday, July 23rd: 9am-5pm
Wednesday, July 24th: 9am-5pm
Thursday, July 25th: 9am-2pm
Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, however, access to the show floor will be restricted to attendees that have made appointments with booths. CHA explained how this will work in the announcement:
New appointment setting software will allow you to schedule 15-minute appointments with whomever you want based on criteria in their profile (products by category, new products, etc.) Both buyers and suppliers can request an appointment. If there are gaps in your schedule the software will suggest appointments based on the criteria you enter (Ex: I’m looking for paper products, new products, I manufacture paints, etc.).
Online reaction to the announcement of the location change for CHA Summer has been mixed so far. Some reaction is predictable, based on geography. Midwestern area CHA attendees are upset of course that the show is leaving their area, increasing their hassle and cost to attend. Balancing that are the western attendees for whom the location is more convenient and affordable. Among attendees who have to travel a distance to get to either location, however, the initial reaction seems positive. Cheaper hotels and a better range of entertainment options for the show’s off-hours seem to be the most frequently cited reasons – exactly the reason that Las Vegas is such a popular trade show destination.
CHA promised in the announcement that more details on CHA Summer 2013 would be forthcoming in Anaheim at CHA Winter 2o13, which is right around the corner.
Want to stay up-to-date on all the latest scrapbook news?
About Nancy Nally
I am the principal of a sales rep. group and would like more information on the appointment system. We usually make appointments with our stores and take them to the booths that we represent. It is unclear as to how we fit into this new model.
That’s an excellent question…I highly recommend that you address it directly to CHA right away as they are still in the process of setting up how all this is going to work and need that feedback.
This is exciting and I hope that at some point they come closer to the east coast… like new york, new jersey, or PA… the travel costs are far too much to attend if we are flying
Will this summer event be open to the public?
I contacted CHA about that very thing Emma and I was told that it would NOT be open to the public which is a downside to the show if you are bringing a significant other along for an extended stay in Vegas.
I teach rubber stamping, sells craft/cards and also a party coordinator. I would like to go to Cha show in Las vegas in July. Need to know on how do I go about going and being a member.
I am thrilled it moved to Vegas. Cheaper and more to do:)
I am dissapointed that Summer CHA has moved. It will be very expensive to have to fly out there and bringing home anything will be expensive because it will have to be shipped. Chicago is centrally located and has plenty to do outside of the CHA. Iam always busy with the CHA events and don’t want to spend much time outside of the conference anyway.
Terie
Terie, with all due respect, yes, it sucks for you personally if the Chicago location was convenient for you and it has now moved further away. But that doesn’t make it a bad decision overall for the show to make this move. As someone who has attended many CHA shows and only ever twice gone to a show that didn’t involve a flight of less than 1,000 miles (and only one that I was able to drive to)….there are many, many, many show attendees who routinely travel long distances to attend the show. I am excited about the cheaper hotel rooms (by about 75%), more flight options to Las Vegas from my home, and more food and transportation options in the area. I personally found the Chicago venue very
Those of us who always fly to the show know that you have to leave extra room in your suitcase when you fly out and be picky about what you choose to bring home. I’ve only ever had to ship things once, and that was one of my first shows when I was still learning.
The show is dying and needed a change. CHA has announced its intent to make the summer show rotate across the country geographically, hosting it in various regions each year. I believe next year is St. Louis?, and then after that will be Charlotte.
Am I correct when I see that Summer CHA is NOT open to the public at all? To bad, I was thinking of flying out for it. I think that you may find that this is a big mistake. (Especially having it located in a town that people spend money in!)
The CHA Conference and Trade Shows have never been open to the public – they are business events that have always been restricted to attendance only by qualified members of the crafts industry. The shows exist to educate industry members, provide networking opportunities, and serve as the industry’s wholesale marketplace where retailers can see the latest products from manufacturers.
Also, to clarify Susan – your comment addressed to me said that “you may find this is a big mistake” about the CHA show not being open to the public. This is not a CHA website and I am not a representative of the organization. I’m just a member who attends the show regularly, and who writes about CHA-related news for the scrapbook industry as part of my work here on Scrapbook Update.
I do apologize to you for my comment “you”. I guess that I have been speaking of the wrong CHA show. A few years back I attended a CHA show that was open to the public the last two days. It was held at one of the convention centers in Chicago and we were allowed in both days. I think we paid something like $10 or $15 for both days and all the big vendors were there. People like Tim Holtz had a booth there but was there only for the vendors but his booth remained and we were allowed to do things like watch presetations, enter raffles, do make and takes etc. Again, I apologize for the confusion.. Any chance that you know what show I was attending? I want to go to another one.
No apology needed Susan. I write a lot about CHA and sometimes when I write about things a lot people mistake me for the companies I write about. I’ve even gotten debt collection notices for companies that have closed that I have written about! LOL So I wanted to make sure it was understood is all.
The show you attended was called the CHA Supershow. It was held after the CHA trade show a couple of times and a few (but not all) of the vendors stayed in the same place on the floor for the Supershow, but drastically altered their booth set-up to show current (not upcoming) product and be for a consumer audience. The resulting show wasn’t anything like the trade show that had been the previous days although it involved some of the same people and companies. Unfortunately it caused confusion, because some of the consumers who attended thought they were “attending CHA” when in fact it was an entirely different event set up for a different audience.
CHA is no longer doing stand-alone Supershows. For awhile they were sponsoring sections at other shows like the Southern Women’s show, but they don’t have any of those on their 2013 calendar.