ISSA/INTERCLEAN® 2005, held October 18-21 in Las Vegas, broke attendance records with 17,579 registered attendees — the highest turnout in the trade show’s history.

The show featured 689 exhibitors, 5,499 distributor personnel, 2,376 building service contractors and 2,015 in-house service providers. Facility service provider attendance hit a record high, beating the previous mark set in Chicago in 1999 by 20 percent.

“More significant than the total attendance was the ratio of customers to exhibitors, which was 2-to-1 this year compared with 1.4-to-1 in the prior two years,” said ISSA Executive Director John Garfinkel. “The historical ratio used to be less than 1-to-1 when the show was in the old format — available only to distributors.”

High points
Highlights of this year’s convention included a keynote speech by Jim Collins. The best-selling author of Built to Last and Good to Great drew 4,000 attendees to his Wednesday talk.

Over two days, BSCs and in-house service providers were not only motivated, but they also received solid business tips from the educational seminars sponsored by Contracting Profits and Housekeeping Solutions magazine.

For the second year in a row, Wednesday’s Facility Service Provider Networking Lunch was sold out. The event drew 600 participants from around the world to discuss such topics as green cleaning and business growth strategies.

This year also saw some new additions to the show, including a sports bar, a happy hour, and the ISSA Innovation Fashion show. The latter, which ran hourly for the first two days of the show, featured 49 products paraded down the runway by ornately costumed Vegas showgirls. Attendees’ votes decided winners in six categories. Award-winning products came from the following companies: Spartan Chemical, CastleRock Industries, Georgia-Pacific, Impact Products, The Bullen Cos. and Rubbermaid Commercial Products.

Next year, the show travels to Chicago, and is scheduled for October 4-7, 2006.

View this article with images as it appeared in Contracting Profits magazine (pdf).




POSTED ON: 11/1/2005