Ihobby

[jetboat]

Who's going? what day are you going? Meet up and go as a group?

[Mega Fattie]

More info. I thought a few years ago was the last year in illinois?

[jetboat]

Next weekend, in Schaumburg

iHobby Expo

[Mega Fattie]

I doubt ill go to that.

[badhoopty]

in my 15 years here ive never went, but i remember the same as steve, last year they said it was their last time in chicago. unless it was a different thing.


i might go, but i dont really need anything. i'd probably just chat up some of the bigger places and get some names and emails for possible jobs.

[dc6287]

Going Saturday at noon, going more for the slot car side of things though. What rc vendors are supposed to be there?


Sent from deep underground

[cjanderson3]

Originally Posted by badhoopty

in my 15 years here ive never went, but i remember the same as steve, last year they said it was their last time in chicago. unless it was a different thing.


i might go, but i dont really need anything. i'd probably just chat up some of the bigger places and get some names and emails for possible jobs.

You are thinking of the RC Expo that was only here once. But the I-hobby is usually in rosemont every year.

[Mega Fattie]

I've only ever been to I hobby in rosemont, I remember them saying that it was the last year for I hobby in Illinois. Maybe 2010, or 2011?

I also remember them having nothing of interest to me. Lots of traxxas, trains, flying stuff, and cheap crap.

Hitec was there, but how much of their stuff can you really look at?

[jetboat]

Ihobby pulled out of Chicago and went to Cleveland so they could get out of union contracts that were killing the show. RCX was in Chicago for 1 year but had poor planning when it came to location.

Now Ihobby has come back to town and is trying to rebuild. I'm afraid it may have issues that will hurt it next year... They were unable to attract any of the major players.

I havent fully decided on going but, if it rains and nothing else is going on, Ill prolly go.

[jetboat]

its a smaller show but PACKED. I made the mistake of talking to the new show manager. It seems that they didnt have any of the contacts from previous shows... Long story short, I was asked how much floor space we needed for a demo/try me track.

[motorbikemike]

I went to the show Saturday. Exhibitor wise... it was a flop. Crowd wise... it was Packed. I have attended most of the I-hobby expos at Rosemont in the past 15 years. The show seems to go in waves. Some years its good and some years its bad. The last really good one was around 2007ish or 2008ish. From then on it seems to have been down hill. The show had a lot of issues. Being in the exhibit business myself I got some of the inside scoop on the issues that killed it. One was for several years it was a "no sale" show. Meaning no sellable merchandise was allowed to be sold at the show due to a lack of security to stop shoplifters. The fact that it was a "no sale" show stopped a lot of exhibitors from wasting their time attending. Their there to move product... that's the whole point. Another issue vendors did not like was the serious lack of advertisement and promotion the show got. Unless you where a boy scout, a diehard hobbiest that had already attended a previous show, or worked at a hobby local shop, or listened to your gramp's AM radio at 4 in the morning, you had know idea the show existed. Another issue was the outrageous Chicago union labor rates for drayage and I and D. It cost way too much to be worthwhile. From all these problems vendors turned away from I-hobby and RCX was born under a different promotion company. Almost over advertised with the help of air age media... it seems to be a major hit in the industry. I just wish I could afford to fly out to Cali to attend.

This years I-hobby in Schaumburg was a bit of a flop. The only major R/C vendor there was Horizon Hobby with their brands. And even that was a very poor showing. I'd say they showed about 10% of their product. there were a few import heli companies represented, and a few import foam airplane companies there. Lots of plastic models, trains, etc. It looks like the hall was filled too. Not much room for major vendors to show up in the future.

I doubt we'll ever see Axial there again. I only remember seeing them In Chicago once. I think it was back in 07 or 08 or when ever the AX10 was just hitting the market. I remember I really wanted one at that point so I stopped by their booth to check it out and ask a bunch of questions... Now is where I get to too my own horn a bit. I asked them if I should buy any spares when I ordered the truck. They said "Yeah, buy a couple of drive shafts. They have a tendency to load too hard and the ears at the universal joint spread and pop off or sometimes just break" I took a quick look at it and told them to make a steel or aluminum collar to put over the end of the drive shaft. That it would simply not allow the ears to spread. with in 2 months they were selling a drive shaft with a collar on it. And now I think its a stock design on all their vehicles. Its a small victory, but it makes me feel good. LOL. Oh and another fun story for me from that same year... A few months earlier I had built a custom stretched R/C motorcycle For Lito Reyes of R/C Car action magazine to run in their national speed record trials. (I manufactured Carbon fiber motorcycle chassis kits for a few years) He set the world speed record with the stretched version I made for him. To my surprise Castle Creations which supplied the power system for it, made a Huge Graphic in the center of their tradeshow booth that was a picture of the Bike advertising it was the Fastest r/c motorcycle in the world. At first glance I thought in my head "Oh cool... finally a r/c bike on center stage" then a half a second later I realized it was the bike I built for Lito. I had no idea at the time until I saw it at their booth, but they decided to use it as their Ad campaign for almost the whole next year. Running it as a 2 page spread in most of the major R/C car magazines. Yeah that was a good year. Now I kinda feel like a jackass bragging about it, but I never really told anyone about it before. So... eh. I got it out of the system.

Anyway, Its hard telling what will come of the I-hobby show in the future. I think its downhill from here.

[cjanderson3]

Great stories man!!! I wish I could say I contributed to the rc world in some other way than with my money

[jetboat]

I disagree... I think this year was a rebuilding year. I talked to the show manager for a good 30-45 mins. When the company reorganized, the original promoter took her contacts with... That left the scrambling to find events (not vendors). Now that they can sell, don't have to pay union dues etc, I think the show will grow. I think next year you will see at least 1 "try me" track and 1 more "big" advertiser. From there, we can only hope to see it grow.

As for Axial, they have never been at the show. Yes they had trucks in a booth and a rep but, they didn't pay for it. They used a booth that a shop reserved and paid for. When the shop couldn't afford to send someone, Axial volunteered to send a rep for them. If you looked closely, the shops banner was there.

[tom@vp]

I heard it was the promoter jacking prices tp 10k a booth...

hard to recover that kind of cash, from trade shows for anybody.

And they screw with true attendance numbers by giving people tickets from other events so you get a bunch of people that really have no interest they just go cause they got tickets.

this always happens in the trade show biz... at least in manufacturing...

[motorbikemike]

Originally Posted by jetboat

As for Axial, they have never been at the show. Yes they had trucks in a booth and a rep but, they didn't pay for it. They used a booth that a shop reserved and paid for. When the shop couldn't afford to send someone, Axial volunteered to send a rep for them. If you looked closely, the shops banner was there.

Yeah that sounds about right. I think it was only a 10x10 or something small. And if I remember right there was a Easy up tent or some sort of canopy in the booth space which seemed weird. I do remember they had a really cool small crawling hill built out of Foam and Truck bed liner paint. That was the first time I had ever seen that done. I thought it was pretty cool. I didn't pay too much attention to the booth though. I was pretty focused on the trucks. I remember talking to the guys... I thought there was 3 of them. I remember asking them about their company because they seemed pretty new to the business And I was kind of interested in looking for a job in the industry at the time. They said they just got started a couple years earlier and that they had worked for HPI, Though HPI didn't wanted to go in the direction they did so they branched off and started their own company. Anyway that was years ago...

[Mega Fattie]

That's interesting if that is how axial started.

[badhoopty]

axial just kinda came out of the blue from what i remember. i can remember before the ax10 seeing gas engine cooling heads and stuff from them, and thinking they had a cool logo and their ads looking cool.

great example of guys taking a risk in a niche market and it seemingly paying off pretty well.

[Mega Fattie]

I remember seeing big block nitro engines back in my HPI savage days