SEMA Show 2020 (Finally) Canceled; Was Anyone Even Planning to Show Up?

From Autoweek

SEMA finally did what seemed was inevitable and cancelled this year’s show. There is some discussion about having a virtual show similar to what CES has announced it will do in January at the same Las Vegas Convention Center location, but so far no concrete plans have been released.

“SEMA, the Specialty Equipment Market Association, announced today that due to COVID-19 and concerns that event facilities and services will be unavailable, the SEMA Show will not be taking place in 2020,” the organization said in a release.

The cancellation is unprecedented in the show’s 50-plus-year history. Neither the Great Recession nor 9/11 resulted in a cancellation.

“It’s huge,” said Edelbrock President and CEO Don Barry. “It’s a big deal. It’s historic. Since the first SEMA show in the 1960s, Edelbrock was there and we’ve been there ever since.”

The release from show organizers suggests that the cause of the cancellation was partly a concern that the Las Vegas Convention Center wouldn’t be available due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Some attendees had planned to be there, COVID or no COVID.

“Oh, yeah, we were still in the process of (going),” said Vicky Wheeler of Specialty Products Company, a suspension alignment parts maker. “We were talking about getting Steph (Papadakis’ Formula Drift) car, whether Toyota was gonna get it or we were going to get it, that kind of stuff. We’ve been in touch with the show people, and they’ve been in touch with me about where I stood and stuff like that. But unless they canceled the show, we were still making plans.”

But calls by Autoweek to regular SEMA show attendees suggests that many show regulars had already decided not to make the trek to Vegas, they just hadn’t told SEMA yet.

“Officially we have our booth space reserved, we’ve got our sponsorships, we’ve got our rooms reserved,” said one show attendee, who preferred anonymity because they didn’t want to risk losing their prime booth space if they backed out before the show was cancelled. “Unofficially, we were waiting for SEMA to cancel the whole thing.”

That attendee, and maybe others, feared that announcing a pullout would mean they’d lose their seniority and their prime show floor space for 2021. That fear kept them from participating in last week’s SEMA survey polling members about what to do come November.

“We were unwilling to participate in that survey because we didn’t want to feel like party poopers and then be secretly penalized. Because we have sponsors and things that are ‘first refusal’ and we’ve had seniority for certain spots, and (we feared) all of that might be swept out from under us (had we cancelled).”

That might have been a little paranoid, but it might also have reflected a wider fear among potential attendees concerned about a global pandemic and the potentially disastrous health results of a massive, four-day-long convention.

One past SEMA attendee did some surveying of his own to see if anyone was going to be there.

“We just wanted to get a feel for where (attendees) heads were, so I just sent an email yesterday to about 100 of our favorite clients, and just asked them, ‘Do you plan on attending? Do you plan on exhibiting? If you’re not, is it because of COVID-19? And if you are going to go, what cost measures are you taking for your staff and visitors in your booth,” said Brian Zembrycki, Director of Sales and Marketing at Rattletrap Productions, producers of the TV show “Gears” with Stacy David, which has been on the air for 15 years and is now available on Motor Trend TV, MAV TV, MAV TV Canada and Amazon Prime Video. “The answers were overwhelmingly either, ‘No, we’ve definitely canceled’ or, ‘We are on the verge of canceling,’ or, ‘We will be canceling in the next week or so we’re just finalizing alternative plans… of all the responses, only one company said ‘Yes, we’re still gonna be going.”

Based on that, Zembrecki decided before the announcement that he and his company were not going to attend.

SEMA has now floated the idea of doing the show in some sort of virtual medium, though exactly what form that would take has not been defined.

“Recent SEMA Show survey results indicated interest in a possible virtual trade show with related live elements,” the organization said. “SEMA will be working with industry members to determine interest levels on specific alternatives.”

Attempts were made to sound encouraging.

“The SEMA Show is committed to furthering businesses in the automotive specialty equipment market, and to providing manufacturers and buyers with the best opportunity to connect, promote new products and discover new trends,” said Chris Kersting, SEMA president and CEO. “We appreciate the spirit, hard work and innovation our industry puts into the SEMA Show each year. While we are disappointed circumstances prevent us from hosting the show in November, we look forward to getting everyone together in 2021 for another outstanding event.”

If you’ve already laid down booth money, fear not, full refunds for exhibitor booth deposits and attendee registration fees will be issued, SEMA said. Further updates will be posted at semashow.com.

“You don’t want to miss the SEMA show if it’s gonna happen because all your competitors are there meeting with salespeople,” said Jim Dvorak of Mother’s Polishes, Waxes and Cleaners. “But if the show is not happening, then everybody’s back on the same, level playing field again.”

And everybody has to innovate. Those who innovate best, succeed.