Attendance At World Stamp Show-Ny 2016

I didn't see this posted yet:

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November 13, 2016

For Immediate Release
Attendance at World Stamp Show-NY 2016
by Wade Saadi, President

Attendance at World Stamp Show-NY 2016 was as successful as previous USA Internationals. At all of those shows, attendance was measured by "gate clicks"; a click for every time a person entered the show floor, regardless of how many times a day they traversed the gate throughout the show. This would include reentering the show floor after attending a seminar, an auction, going to get coffee or lunch, visiting the lobby for an event, going out for some fresh air, etc.

If a person who attended the show attended two seminars and went out for any food or drink, they would have 4 gate clicks that day. If they attended the show for all 8 days that would be 32 gate clicks for one person. However, if they came in once and then left, that would be a single click.

It was felt the most accurate way for us to account for attendance would be by counting those who actually registered; the unique visitors. This was possible for this show with the advent of online registration and today's technology; almost 50% of our registrations were done prior to the show by the show goer, and another 10% by us beforehand (dealers, exhibitors, volunteers, donors, et. al.)
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Afterwards, using the actual registration numbers, others could extrapolate whatever hypothetical they need from there. Regardless of different methods of accounting for attendance, there were more important and relevant methods of determining the success of a U.S. International.

To wit; the vast majority of the dealers who attended had a fantastic show and were delighted at their sales and traffic. The show attendees, from all accounts, were delighted with the event. The press reports and coverage were fantastic and the hobby was well served by the exhibition.

By the numbers
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2,380 – VIP Badges printed in advance
275 – VIP Badges printed on-site
2,530 – School group participants
7,738 – Paper Registrations
10,094 – Online Registrations
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23,017 unique visitors by registration

Hi Risny. It was reported in a thread: "World Stamp Show NY2016 - At the show". But thank you for reminding us.

Peter

Thanks for pointing that out. I searched but didn't find that. Anyway this is the full text that was mailed out just this week. The number is the same as mentioned in that thread.

The introductory wording sounds like an excuse for what was to come. What are VIP badges? Taking out these and students, the number of regular registrations is 17,382. And one has to wonder why with "today's technology" these figures were only released 6 months after the show? Something seems off here.

Nailed it Jenny. After a long and tiring election cycle Americans should be good at detecting 'spin' and this one goes off the meter.

They changed how they counted attendance between this World Show and previous shows. This was a decision that surely was made before the show since it required planning. When they made the decision there must have been some reasons or justifications. What were those?

Some of the possible reasons seem apparent. Among the most obvious would be the desired for a way to hide the fact that attendance is declining. Reporting that attendance was declining would reflect badly upon the organization and fund raisers. Declining attendance at this year's show means more difficulty for organizing the next one (and setting fees).

It could be argued that they made the decision without realizing that they would lose the ability to compare attendance with previous shows but this would not reflect well upon the organizers either.

He started the message with a very definitive statement, "Attendance at World Stamp Show-NY 2016 was as successful as previous USA Internationals". He follows with telling us that the previous method of calculating attendance was flawed.

So if the pervious method was flawed, how can he definitively make any attendance comparisons? Makes no sense, the only logical conclusion is 'spin'.

A 'no-spin' statement would have been, 'Previous methods for calculating attendance were flawed so we improved how this was done. Unfortunately this left us without anyway to accurately compare attendance with previous shows but everyone felt that attendance was good.'

I am also unsure of how the use of 'registrations' translated to people walking in through the door. The assumption seems to be that every single person who registered online actually made the trip to NY and attended the show. Is this true?

When they say 'registrations' does it mean individual registrations or does it mean the number of people listed on the registration? So if I filled out the online registration and said that myself and 3 other family members would be attending, but ended up not going, they would be counting four as attending?

In my opinion the 'improved' attendance method, while better than the previous one, still falls short of being good.

A good use of technology would have pulled this all together to provide real-time, 100% accurate attendance counts. This meant using the registration process to provide an ID badge with a barcode. Each visitor would then present their badge at the door (barcode scanner) as they enter. Coming and going multiple times is then not an issue. Accurate attendance numbers are automatically compiled; it would have been child's play to develop a browser frontend to display the attendance numbers in real-time. Plus, you would then be able to glean all kinds of additional metrics such as 'busiest hours' etc. They also would have real-time info which would have identified any bottlenecks or other things which would allow improvements during the actual show instead of 6 months after the show has ended.

The registration process could have been done completely through kiosks. Then kiosks could have printed an ID badge in real-time. The only need for volunteers would have been to assist those who needed help using the kiosks. (The same amount of data has to be entered whether it is in real-time or at a later time.)

If the show did not want to invest in the equipment (kiosks and door scanners) for just this show they could have rented it. People like myself would certainly have volunteered to write the software and database systems.

Don

I wonder how many people felt like me ,paying $2,000.00 for travel and hotel for a week in New York was too much . I decided to spend that 2 grand on three country collections at the Kelleher Auction .
I have to also disagree with the statement that it was a profitable show for all the stamp dealers , when you look at the number of visitors and take out the 10% were children ,you come up with 20,000 visitors, are they spending $1,000 per visitor on purchases . Having had many tables at bourses and shows it is hard to believe the dollars spend was that high ,sure some out of country visitors purchased made that number but the average collector no way .

Yes, 98% spin, but body counts from an every-ten-year event are a terrible way to understand the state of the hobby.

IKEY-----This week there many stamp auctions with prices realized posted on the internet . I believe it would be a better indictor of the state of the hobby . I don't think looking at or giving one stamp lot as a example would be a true measure . When you see Very Fine stamps of the U.S. going for 1/3 catalog and worldwide country collections going for opening bid and not seeing much competive bidding across huge parts of the auction and ebay buyers looking at small fraction of catalog lots then that is troubling .
There is always buyers for the 2 cents per stamp lots and better stamps that will round out a life time collector ,but I am more concern about the intermediate collector that is the back bone of the hobby , those collectors who buy $5.00 to $100.00 stamps and those who spend $100.00 to $1,000 .00 on a country collection . There seems to be a pull back or lost of those type of collectors .

I attended the World Stamp Show for the "Show". Seeing the incredible exhibits was top on my list. Followed closely by, attending as many club/society meetings as possible.
I certainly didn't go there with expectations of filling shopping bags full of stamps and covers. I did buy a few items and even made a couple of trades. That was fun.

But... I can buy and sell at home. There were so many other parts of the show I might never get to experience again. Those are what I went for.

I would think a better measuring stick of the shows success would be, how many new members did the various clubs/societies gain, due to the show.
Edit: BTW Meeting a few SCF members was a bonus!

I would just add attendance is just one data point of many if one is trying to judge the state of the hobby. If the attendance was way up, I would not interpret this as proof of a better market.

I concur that the show's attendance is only part of any understanding about the health of the hobby; but it is used in that way by some. The attendance is probably used more heavily for promotion purposes and the establishing of the fees for the next show.

I wonder if they follow-up with the show dealers 12 months or so after the show to poll them on how much new business they feel they received from the show.

I see that about 60% of the registrations were from online this year; wonder how that compares to the last show? Surely they can no longer argue that not enough hobbyists are online and keep refusing to offer an online attendance alternative. When they finally get around to offering online attendance, will they once again have to change the method of counting attendance?

With these only coming every 10 years, having plenty of time to plan, should they not be in a better position to take advantage of the online population of hobbyists? Is this not the leading world showcase for the hobby to put its best, most advanced, foot forward?
Don

Don, maybe you could reach out to Mark Butterline for 2026. Not necessarily for you to put in man hours (I know you're busy), but maybe just get them thinking about things they haven't thought of.

floortrader:

I would certainly agree that auction prices are a better indicator than once-per-decade body counts, but they are not a free ride, either.

Prices are a function of things that are happening outside of the hobby, too. These include the general level of prices (a/k/a inflation/deflation), the occasional (once/generation?) asset bubble and, my favorite evil suspect, money-laundering.

Let alone the rise (or collapse) of a middle class here or there, opening/closing of borders & embargoes, the invention of new lower-cost lower-friction marketplaces, and other events we've all discussed at length.

That having been said, a well-structured regularly-published price index for a basket of widely-traded stamps would be a welcome addition to the hobby.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Linn's Stamp News initiated this one or two issues ago by publishing a list of US classics with values at grade 80 and others; they say they will update it quarterly which will let people track changes. It's a subset of the very long graded value list that appears in the Specialized US catalog. You have to enter the data in a spreadsheet or database on your own, though, if you want to do graphing or other analysis. Nevertheless, it is a decent step forward in providing a fact basis for some of the "stamps as investments" opinion writing that appears from time to time. Richard Lehman, and possibly others, promote the investment rationale but do not share meaningful data and basically ask you to believe them (or, I suspect, hire them as a consultant to access the data).

I question whether there has every been a show where EVERY dealer made a profit. That is not the real question. It is whether a large enough % of the dealers were satisfied in how they did. And we do not have such data. Is the number of dollars spent, not the number of people that really matters to the dealers (although the number of room nights booked in show affiliated hotles matters too as there is often the requirement of a minumum number of nights in the contract for the convention center, but the total number of visitors and the number booking a room is a very different thing).