Trade Show TalesBlog

Word on the Street by Kevin Carty

On Getting Healthy

As we climb out of the recession, the trade show industry as a whole has bounced back. Albeit slowly. From the manufacturing side, we have witnessed budgets increase and align with the design hopes of end users. All good things.

But as many of you would agree, not unlike the economy at large, the slow to moderate recovery (healthy growth as it has been called) is a key component to actual recovery. Let me draw a personal comparison if you don’t mind.

Some time ago, 11 years to be exact, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer. Like many others who have experienced cancers of many kinds, I was given chemotherapy as my primary treatment. And chemo is designed to essentially kill you from a cellular level. Good and bad cells alike are destroyed in order to hopefully get all the cancer out of your system.

Afterwards, your body (regardless of age) is essentially back at the starting line. Not just from the chemo, but also from the fact that you have been without physical activity for a long period while recovering from surgery and from being out of commission during treatments.

Now, as much as I might have wanted to, I could not just go out and run a 10k, ride my bike 30 miles, or play a game of tennis. Actually walking around the block was like running a marathon. I constantly had to remind myself or be reminded that I needed to take my time and that it would take time to recovery from essentially 4-5 months of inactivity. Atrophy is an amazing phenomenon. It happens so fast, yet it takes so long to build your body back up to where it once was.

VK-5076 Island Exhibit

The reason I am sharing this is simple. Currently in our business and industry, like other industries in the US market, we are still recovering from the recession of the past 2-3 years. And in all reality, that recovery did not really start until about January of this year. At least that is when we really started seeing consistent, positive economic changes. And I, like others, have to keep reminding myself or be reminded by others that we are still early in this recovery process. Lest I forget that some even think we might slip back into another recession. I personally doubt that, but I have to admit that nothing would surprise me.

However, I/we need to continue to remain patient. Just like the muscles in your legs and arms that go unused for a long period of time and take awhile to gain their strength back, our economy and businesses will also take time to truly bounce back to peak health. So rather than focus on the length of time the recovery is taking, we should be focusing on the leaps and bounds we are making daily and weekly. Much of which is a direct result of the hard work we did to clean up our own houses during the lean times so we all come out of this stronger and healthier than before.

I know this may seem a bit off topic as you review the latest Island designs in Design Monday, like Ginsana (VK-5076) introduced this week, but it’s really not. It reflects some of the hard work we have been doing during the recovery process as we create high-end and multi-functional designs for you and your end users.

I guess what grandma always said is true, “Patience is a virtue.” Or as my grandad said, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Have a great weekend!

–Kevin Carty

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