by Kent Baker

Over the past twenty years in previous roles with Maytag and Jacuzzi I regularly attended the International Builders’ Show, many times with the responsibility of being an exhibitor. I learned to be a supporter of the show as result of the benefits (including PR, new product introductions, and customer and supplier development) that I saw both Maytag and Jacuzzi derive from being an exhibitor at IBS.

Attending IBS this month after my absence since 2006 I found that the show had changed dramatically with the decline of the builder industry. The bottom fell out of the industry after 2006 with U.S. housing starts going from over 2MM starts in 2006 to slightly less than 600,000 starts in 2010. In parallel, the IBS show I last remembered had attendance of over 100,000 in 2006 and had dropped to 47,000 attendees this year. Exhibitors were over 2000 in 2006 and this year totaled 1130. Read the rest of this entry »