LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In 2022, GIE+EXPO was relaunched as Equip Exposition, after the show came under the ownership and management of the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI) in 2021.
In the years since the rebranding and relaunch, Equip Exposition has seen significant growth in key metrics, including growth in the number of women in attendance and engagement of young professionals, as well as an increase in the quality of experiences at the event.
At the time of the relaunch, the annual event already had a nearly 40-year history in the city of Louisville, and the OPEI team was able to draw on the industry and show knowledge of longtime staff and exhibitors to guide decisions as the show transformed into Equip Exposition. This deep knowledge also helped the team ensure the show accurately reflected industry professionals and the market itself.
“It was the perfect time to re-evolve and adapt our strategy to the business, to the way our landscape contractors and other professionals buy their equipment and how it’s distributed,” said Kris Kiser, OPEI’s president and CEO. “Certainly the way we talk to people has changed, and the Internet and social media came along, and then influencers came along. All of those things helped us realize it was time (to rebrand).”
Trade Fair Manager I spoke with Kiser to learn more about the challenges of rebranding a long-established event, the investments needed to succeed, and keeping the show fresh for attendees each year.
Evolve and invest
Taking over the management of the show allowed OPEI to use its capitalized resources to be more innovative and creative in the design of the show. Without a group of partners working on the management of the show, the OPEI team was able to be more flexible and have more freedom to make decisions and implement ideas quickly.
“When you have partners in a business, you have to involve them in decision-making,” Kiser said. “And, especially in financial matters, when your profits are
“It’s basically a percentage of revenue, so decision-making can become more difficult. There was a need for flexibility, and as a result, the show has really grown dramatically since we took it over.”
One of the biggest changes and challenges the team faced during the rebranding and relaunch was learning how to effectively speak to different generations to expand the reach and relevance of Equip Exposition.
“We’re now relying a lot more on digital social media,” Kiser said. “We have a lot of influencers and we have programmatic elements, like podcasts. There’s a podcast row in the West Wing, where a lot of young people who are engaged in the industry are talking to their peers and there’s a lot of learning.”
In addition to addressing audiences across generations, the team also created consistent branding, language and visual elements to match the Equip Exposition branding.
“That’s the key: finding your brand,” Kiser said. “We work closely with our exhibitors to create common nomenclature and signage visibility, so we’re all united. It’s catchy, ‘Equip the show, equip yourself.’”
“You have to invest, you have to spend money,” Kiser said. “We worked hard to make the project creative, innovative, engaging, visually appealing and fluid. We had the resources and the people to do it, and if we didn’t have them, we hired them. We wanted to make the process as simple as possible, and as innovative and creative as possible.”
Diversify the audience
What began as a small part of the National Farm Machinery Show in 1984, the show is now a TSE Gold 100 show, ranking fifth among the largest shows in the United States in 2022.
In 2021, the show spanned 908,022 square feet with 690 exhibitors, then expanded to 1,116,814 square feet in 2022, with nearly 800 exhibitors. Total attendance has increased each year post-COVID, and now all three metrics are surpassing 2019 levels.
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The 2023 edition brought together more than 1.2 million NSFs, 876 exhibiting companies and more than 27,000 attendees at the Kentucky Exposition Center. Among those attendees, there is a growing number of women, as the team consciously strives to attract more women to the show.
“Women are often in leadership positions,” Kiser says. “They’re making the financial decisions, the design of the structures, the organizational decisions, the personnel decisions, the tax decisions. So that’s what we’re focusing on: creating that classroom experience or those sessions and trainings that are dedicated to those things.”
The show also offers women-only events and sessions where attendees can mingle and, most importantly, learn from each other.
Equip Exposition is also looking to attract a wider geographic audience at upcoming trade fairs.
“One of the challenges is regionalization; a lot of landscaping operations are east of the Rockies,” Kiser said. “There are a lot of landscaping companies all over the West Coast, and we want to reach out to those people and find ways to attract them to the show. That’s one of the reasons we structured the show the way we did. We want to reach more people; we have over a million square feet of exhibit space and now we want to fill it with visitors.”
Anchored in the community
Since the beginning of the series, the action has taken place in Louisville.
“We’re expanding the city; we’re a citywide event and we’re taking over the place,” Kiser said. “Louisville is unique, we’ve always been here and we have a great relationship with the place. We have 30 acres outside that they let us tear up; we tear it up, we dig and dig trenches, and it’s unique. Our attendees love it because it’s a test run before they invest, and they can get out and get dirty and run the machine.”
Kiser said that as the show continues to grow and challenges arise, Equip Exposition will work hard to stay in the city where it is located.
“I believe in being a responsible corporate citizen,” Kiser said. “The city has been very good to us for 40 years, and we return the favor. We’re in the top five event contributors in Louisville year after year, so it’s a shared relationship. We built an outdoor space, we created a dog park downtown and we gave them an agility center.”
An important aspect of Equip Exposition and OPEI’s community outreach is the area’s rescue animals, with an adoption event held each year during the show that results in hundreds of adoptions. The adoption event – Mulligan’s Mutt Madness – is presented by the TurfMutt Foundation, the educational arm of OPEI and Equip Exposition, and the Kentucky Humane Society.
“It all started when we were growing and had to move to another building that was further away,” Kiser said. “I remember someone saying we’d never get people to come there, and I said, ‘We’ll put dogs there and they’ll come,’ and they did. We specialize in adopting out old dogs, three-legged dogs, the ones that are hard to get adopted out, and we get them all adopted out, and we follow and share their stories.”
Kiser also said there is something on the horizon for OPEI in Louisville regarding rescued animals.
Looking to the future
The 2024 Equip Exposition will take place October 15-18 and will feature programming designed to delight attendees, including a welcome reception at Churchill Downs, an evening concert in the KFC Yum! Center arena, expanded Spanish language training and opportunities to connect with social media influencers.
To learn more about Equip Exposition, click here.
