October 27, 2021
6 Questions This Year’s LightFair will Help Answer
Above: Lightfair 2019 in Philadelphia
It's been 888 days since the last LightFair ended. The exhibit hall for LightFair 2021 opens today at the Javits Center in New York City.
The pandemic has caused numerous lighting events to cancel, pivot and recalibrate. And the gyrations aren’t over. This week’s show will help us gain perspectives on how LightFair will be able to serve the industry in the years ahead. Here are six questions we hope to explore in the days and months ahead.
Will the attendees be pleased with their LightFair experiences?
It’s no secret that there are some notable exhibitors not participating in Lightfair 2021. The trade show floor had 580-600 exhibitors in the recent past. This year the number is 222. And many of the booths are scaled down with Signify, Cooper Lighting Solutions, RAB and GE Current, a Daintree company, each with booths that are 400 square feet or smaller.
Still, even without many of the big names, there are numerous architectural brands exhibiting. And with limited square footage, all brands are selecting to display the products that are their newest and best.
Another popular reason why people attend LightFair is to reconnect with industry people they know or want to get to know better. With fewer of them attending, will this affect the “homecoming weekend” feel that helps attendees form a lasting emotional connection to the show?
Will the quantity and quality of attendees please exhibitors?
Industry people have been projecting that much of the specification and design community will mostly not be showing up for Lightfair this year. The sentiment is strong, even in the local New York metro area where lighting agents tell us that many specifiers are likely sitting this one out.
LightFair has made trade show admission free and invested heavily in marketing the event. They also have been keeping exhibitors abreast of the running attendee list (names and other personal info redacted). The latest numbers as of October 22:
- 1,283 Exhibiting Attendees
- 3,734 Non Exhibiting Attendees
- Show Director, Dan Darby, told us on Tuesday morning that there have been approximately 1,800 additional registrations since last week.
So this year’s show has over 6,800 pre-registered attendees. Per usual, last minute registrations and walk-in registrations will move the number up and up.
How will in-person conferences and seminars be received going forward?
In the past, lighting professionals pursuing CEUs could justify an expensive trip to LightFair by knocking out 20-30 CEUs in a week. The pandemic has taught us that virtual learning is super convenient and abundantly available.
Most professionals we know prefer in-person learning to virtual learning. At the same time, CEU box-checkers who are simply trying to fulfill a requirement, sometimes appreciate a Zoom meeting that allows them to log in, listen with one ear, and then “earn” the credit.
LightFair 2021 has a solid conference schedule with excellent speakers. As usual. Despite that, do professional conferences need to reinvent some things to maintain high levels of interest and engagement from attendees?
What impact will LightFair 2021 have on the population of "LightFair naysayers"?
We’ve all heard the naysayers predicting low-quality attendance and mediocre exhibits. Layering an annual live event on top of a pandemic is a complex dilemma with numerous stakeholders and no easy answers. No matter what actions the LightFair team took during the last 1 ½ years there would likely have been detractors.
The next LightFair will be in 7 ½ months in Las Vegas. We are curious to see if the events of this week cause some good vibes and FOMO leading into LightFair 2022, or cause the naysayers to amplify their messages.
How will IES, IALD & International Market Centers be financially impacted by pandemic LightFair events?
The revenues generated by LightFair are split three ways among the IES, IALD & International Market Centers.
In fiscal year 2018-19 LightFair generated $3.3 million of the IES' $7.7 million in revenue.
In 2019-20, there was no in-person event and LightFair revenues dipped to $90K – likely due to deferred revenue from the previous fiscal year.
With LightFair 2021 and LightFair 2022 each occurring in the 2021-22 fiscal year, we won't see the top-line numbers of those events until the IES Annual Report is issued in February 2023. We wonder if the revenues of two LightFair events will exceed the $3.3M of the 2019 Philadelphia show.
What is the preferred East Coast location for LightFair?
New York City’s Javits Center has hosted LightFair numerous times over the course of the show’s existence. There are some specifiers we talk with who believe that the annual LEDucation event is a more effective format for what they seek to get out of a show. There may be room for both shows to coexist in Manhattan successfully, but we wonder if we will see Philadelphia or another city emerge as the East Coast location for LightFair in the years ahead.
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