Guest Article: the Cost of Exhibiting at HIMSS

Blogger Boy is an anonymous vendor person who wrote editorials last year about his experience at the HIMSS annual conference.

While I cannot do it as eloquently as you, here are some of my musings on being a vendor at HIMSS. First I would like to clear a couple things up though.

There have been some recent posts at HIStalk regarding points at HIMSS. Points are EVERYTHING to us vendors. We will do anything to get them and hold on to them. The only place points come into play is in booth selection. Each year just prior to the show we are given a spreadsheet showing our point position which correlates to a date and time for booth selection during that year’s show. In a convention center like the one at San Diego (long and narrow), even a 15 minute lag in selection behind vendors looking for a similar-sized space can mean the difference between being on (or just off) the main hallway and being hidden in the back by the bathrooms. In our last trip to San Diego, we were dwarfed by several of the outrageous Vendor Cities and had our worst traffic ever at a HIMSS. We were bound and determined to get away from the back doors and closer to the main hallway upon our return to San Diego.

There has also been specific discussion about vendors not attending HIMSS. We are all told that if we skip a year, our cumulative points total will drop to zero. That is why you see vendors keep their booth space (and pay for it) even when they have no intention of attending. And the big guys (known as anchors in HIMSS jargon) get their own private booth selection completed long before all of us little guys start fighting for the scraps of space that are left. Even amongst the anchors, points are king and dictate "picking” order.

Mr. HIStalk, you specifically wondered why we smaller vendors don’t band together and hold an adjunct HIMSS and get attendees to come over and see our wares. I can promise you that will never happen and not because we give a damn about threats from the folks at HIMSS. As it is, we have trouble getting you guys to stop by our booth in the regular HIMSS exhibit hall. There is no way we are going to spend all that money and then have NONE of you guys come over to see us!

Speaking of money, that was actually to be the topic of this note to you. I hope when your readers see how much a small vendor spends to be at their tradeshow, they will stop by and give us little guys a chance to show our products. I promise they will be surprised if they will just tear themselves away from the big cities. Give us a shot and we’ll impress you all with our offerings and astound you with our customer service.

The cost a vendor incurs to participate at HIMSS is quite substantial. And we DO have to be there if we are going to be a player on any level. Once you attend one time, you are committed for life or you are labeled financially shaky by every competitor’s sales rep out there. As a matter of fact, Inside Healthcare Computing (back when it was done by Suzanne Corrales and Bill Donovan, two people for whom I also have a tremendous amount of respect) used to publish a list of vendors who dropped out of HIMSS each year.

Not only is it expensive to be there, it is also a tough place to display your products. Generally you get people for only a few minutes if at all. It is oftentimes hard to tell whether those people are technology weenies, consultants, vendor spies or decision makers. It does not matter to us. At our booth, all of us doing demos are technology weenies of some sort or another. We simply love showing our product. As a small company, generating several leads and seeing old friends makes the trip almost worthwhile. I am never sure our CFO would say that the expense is justified, however.

Let’s take a 50 x 50 foot booth as an example. That is not the size of our booth but to truly remain anonymous, I need to change a few things. Suffice it to say, our company was not far off from that size. Let’s say that you wanted to have a theatre for presentations and just four demo stations. I think this vendor should also have some plants. Of course they will need chairs for you to view these demos (or rest your tired feet). We should have them provide coffee and cookies in the booth for several of the days and I think participating in the Taste of HIMSS is a good idea, too. The booth they rent (yes, most of us rent those) will be very modest with simple graphics. We have to stand on the carpet for hours at a time so let’s get the best padding available and a decent grade of carpet (again, both rentals).

I thought you might enjoy just a couple of details from our expenditures. It might make you reconsider your current career. I know it made me think about it.

In order to give the Otis Spunkmeyer cookies away in your booth, you have to rent the machine from the convention center. There is a $500 charge for the machine and a $100 delivery fee. In addition you must have a certified cookie attendant at $80 an hour for a 4 hour minimum. No, making your own cookies for years and years does NOT qualify you to be a certified cookie attendant. For that price you receive 275 cookies. I’ll do the math for you: that comes out to be $3.35 per cookie. You can get additional cases of cookies (160 in each case) for $200 ($1.25 each). Now I like cookies as much as the next person but that seems a bit high. The coffee that just seems to go hand-in-hand with the cookies is $38 a gallon with a 3 gallon minimum. I don’t know what that would work out to be a cup but I can guarantee you it is a touch more than Starbucks.

But this one is my favorite….the beer. A keg of regular old beer is $565. Apparently though, not just anyone can pour beer from a keg. Silly me thinking I received adequate training at all those keggers in college. Nope, you will be required to use a “trained bartender”. This will cost you an additional $103. HIMSS considers one keg to pour 155 cups. That works out to be $4.30 a cup. Not bad by HIMSS standards. I guess they require you to have a trained bartender so at least someone at your booth does not get toasted on expensive beer!

So, you get an idea of what our little company spends to attend HIMSS last year. What is really sad is that I am certain I am leaving stuff off. See why we troll the hallways trying to get just a few minutes of your time?