We just wrapped up yet another great NASGW Expo and Annual Meeting in Grapevine, Texas. It went off quite well, with a few minor bumps in the road. But luckily, we’ve got a great team of talented people who work for us and we were able to navigate the challenges and put some solutions in place.If you were with us in Texas, thank you for joining us. If you didn’t make it, we’d love to have you think about joining us next year. We’ll be opening up our exhibitor registration for the 2026 show in early November, so be on the lookout for your booth pick time. We’ll be in Phoenix next year, and we’re slightly modifying the pattern of the show as well. For many years, we’ve hosted the show with an opening dinner on Tuesday night, then had the show floor open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning.
Over time though, and with the high demands on people’s schedules, we’ve been asked repeatedly if we’d consider moving the show up a day in the week. So next year, we’re doing just that. We’ll open our Phoenix event with our awards and appreciation banquet on Monday, October 12. The Expo will then run Tuesday the 13th through Thursday the 15th at noon. This will allow all our guests, particularly those who come from the East coast, to get back home in time for the weekend. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback about this change, but we want to make sure we talk about it early, and often, because old habits are sometimes hard to break.
So please, mark your calendars now, because the October NASGW Expo has become a mainstay in this industry. Attendees tell us they like our show because it’s where “business gets done.” We pride ourselves on hosting an event where people can take the time necessary to actually work through business challenges and find some great answers. It’s a great place to share new products, in anticipation of the year to come, and it’s a great place to network with old friends and meet new ones as well.
As always, I make the rounds of the show floor and try to visit with as many attendees as possible. It’s a great opportunity for me to catch up with friends and acquaintances and to meet some of the new exhibitors. It’s always a tremendous learning opportunity. I would say the number one thing I learned this year is that despite the down market, there’s a lot of cautious optimism out there in the marketplace. While some companies have experienced a rough year, other companies are seeing double-digit growth.
How’s that possible you ask? Well, for the most part, I think it’s because our industry has been through so many ups-and-downs that companies are starting to get good at smoothing out the peaks and valleys. While some folks hunker down and let the low spots pass them by, others are leaning in and producing new products, launching them, and enjoying the excitement they are seeing in response. Numerous companies told me they haven’t noticed the valleys at all these past couple years, and instead are seeing real positive growth.
I want to wish a heartfelt congratulations to those companies who left the show with an Appreciation Award for outstanding service to our distributor members over the past year. I’d also like to congratulate all the Caliber Award winners this year. We had some great products to evaluate and some worthy products resulted in awards for a number of great industry companies. Special thanks to the Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA) for their help in judging the awards again this year. The Caliber Awards have grown into a very popular award because it’s based on product performance and innovation.
I wish I could personally thank all the wonderful people who help make the show possible, but I’d need quite a few columns to pull that off. Let me just say there are hundreds and hundreds of people responsible, probably close to 2,000, for the success of the Expo… so thank you to all of you for your help and your participation. We couldn’t do it, and wouldn’t want to do it, without you. It takes a lot of work, but you make it all worthwhile.
Until next time,
Kenyon Gleason
NASGW President