For years, one of the most famous shows for professional sound has been the annual National Association of Music Merchants, or the NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA. My company had shown at NAMM in the past in conjunction with their former North American distributor - the former company I worked with for nearly 20 years. We decided last year that we needed to make our presence known at the show this year to let everyone know that we were now on our own in North America. I had never been to a winter NAMM Show, so I was sort of excited. (I'd been to a couple of the summer NAMM shows in Nashville. The summer show is much smaller than the winter NAMM.)
The NAMM show is one of the oldest trade shows of its type in the world. The origins of the show date back to 1902 when the National Association of Piano Dealers of American - NAPDA - had their first convention in Baltimore. 10 years later the association changed their name to the National Association of Piano Merchants of America and the show changed its name to the NAPMA Convention.
By 1919, the rise of early jazz and marching band music forced the organization to change their name to the present day National Association of Music Merchants. The NAMM Show was held the next 50 years alternating between Chicago and New York City. In 1937, the show required people to register in advance for the first time. 237 attendees and 86 manufacturers ranging from piano manufacturers and distributors, to music publishers, to radio and phonograph manufacturers were at the show in New York.
In 1970, NAMM added a west coast show that was alternately held in either San Francisco or Los Angeles. It moved permanently to Anaheim in 1979 under the name Winter Music & Sound Market while continuing to have a summer show in Chicago.
By 1990, the summer NAMM Show at McCormick Place in Chicago had lost its luster - it was so poorly attended that people referred to that year's show as "The Wake by the Lake". In 1993, the summer show moved to Nashville and was more of a guitar and recording studio show. 20 years later, the Anaheim convention was renamed the NAMM Show and in 2018 the show expanded into the new north hall at the Anaheim Convention Center.
The pandemic meant some changes in the NAMM Show which saw a record attendance of 115,000 attendees in January of 2020. The show was cancelled in 2021 and it was moved to the summer in 2022 with just over 46,000 in attendance. The 2023 show was held in April last year and moved back to its regular date in late January this year. However, attendance was still about 40% lighter than their record year in 2020 and about 15% lower than anticipated attendance by show organizers.
Our company debated back and forth about the merits of going to NAMM this year. Talking with many of our accounts in North America in the previous months, they all thought it would be a good thing if we had a presence at the show. But showing at NAMM is expensive. We decided to do a small booth - a 10' x 10' foot print in the north hall. I have to say that my colleague Stef from Montreal did a stellar job spearheading the plans for our appearance at the show.
One of the other things we had to deal with was housing. I suggested that we stay at a hotel and rent a car to get us back and forth. But being the rookie in our group at NAMM, that was roundly shut down. We decided to rent a house in the area through VRBO.
The house was a 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath house about a mile walk from the Anaheim Convention Center and about 3/4's of a mile from Disneyland. In fact, the house was set up more for families than for 4 conventioneers as it had a game room, multiple strollers, tricycles and kiddie bikes, bunk beds, extra smaller beds in the bedrooms, and a large common area for families to gather for dinner or whatever. The funny thing is that we only found 2 of the 3 baths that had showers in them - 3 of us shared that one while our boss from Germany took the big room with the private bathroom.
It was after we had all gotten home that I realized the 3rd shower was in the pool house next to the garage that had been converted to a game room. Our international sales manager from France had the bedroom that had doors that allowed him to walk out to swim in the pool - which he did numerous times during our stay - and he noticed the small building at the far end of the pool next to a covered patio. "I never even thought to look in there," he said later on. "But who would want to walk out to another building just to take a shower in the morning!"
The back patio area was very nice and relaxing with a covered patio with a gas grill, a hot tub, a seating area with a table-top gas heater, and there was an orange tree from the neighbors next door that my Montreal-colleague - who is about 6'4" - could reach up and grab oranges to eat off the tree. We were close enough to Disneyland to be able to watch the fireworks they would shoot off at night.
It was about a 30-minute walk one-way between the house and the convention center and the weather was absolutely gorgeous the whole time we were there. We were lucky - our stay was sandwiched between two large storms that wreaked havoc on Southern California the week before and the week after we were there. It rained lightly one morning while we were there, but by the time we left the house to walk over to the convention center, it had cleared off and was just a bit muggy. My colleague from Montreal said, "I've come to NAMM for 12 years and that was the first time I ever saw it rain here."
We made dinner on our own a couple times - two of our guys Ubered over to a grocery store nearby, while a liquor store near us actually delivered a bunch of beer, wine and liquor to our house. The other nights, we did Uber Eats - two nights sushi and two nights Thai. And it was way too slick. I passed around my computer for the guys to order what they wanted, I clicked on the "order" button and each time it was less than 30 minutes and the Uber driver was pulling up to the house with the deliveries. And the sushi and Thai food were excellent - the Thai was still warm when delivered, and the sushi was fresh and very good. I overate the whole time we were there as there was also a great burrito place in the food court at the Anaheim Convention Center. I think I gained 10 pounds while I was there.
After we all got home, we were talking during a Zoom meeting about how well we all got along during our time together. "No drama, no problems, no hard feelings," our guy from France said. "I don't get along with my boys as well as we all got along in Anaheim."
And it was a good show for us. We were situated in an area where a number of friends in the industry were also showing. Good friends of mine from my previous job were showing their gear just across the aisle from us, a company from Utah that makes similar gear as we do - but we're friendly with - was directly behind us. A Southern California headphone manufacturer that uses our headphone amplifiers and digital-to-analog converters to display their wares was just down the aisle. We made new friends with some of the other small booths surrounding us.
It wasn't the epicenter of celebrity-sightings - the musicians and performers were hanging out in another hall with manufacturers such as Gibson, Fender, Marshall and other companies. But we did have the "who's-who" of recording engineers and producers such as Bob Clearmountain (Bruce Springsteen, Huey Lewis and the News, Bon Jovi); Gentry Studer (Bush, Ryan Adams, Metallica), Darrell Thorp (Foo Fighters, Beck, Paul McCartney), and Michael Romanowski (Alicia Keys, Peter Frampton, George Strait) who stopped by to say, "Hi!" as all of them use our gear in their studios.
Each year, the NAMM TEC Awards are given out in 24 categories ranging from studio monitors to microphones to signal processing to wireless technology. Our company had 4 products in the finals this year - the most we had ever had in nearly 15 years of showing at NAMM. But our boss was convinced that we would not win. ("We don't spend enough money to win like the big companies do," he said with a shred of sarcasm.) So, we didn't go to the awards on Saturday night and hung out at the rental home eating sushi, drinking beer and wine, and watching basketball - all the while wondering if we really WOULD win an award.
The next day, a mastering engineer from Brazil who we were friendly with came by and told us that he had gone to the awards banquet the night before and said that we had won for our stereo image enhancer that is one of - no, it is - the best selling product we have. We couldn't verify it and we were skeptical, but later in the day I was able to bring the TEC Awards site up on my phone and - sure enough - we did win! We were absolutely floored! We thought that maybe the same people who came around with our table placards touting our products that had made the finals would come by with our award. Nope - never happened. And trying to get the award from the TEC Award people in the days and weeks after the show was over turned out to be quite the ordeal.
For our first big trade show after going direct in North America, I'd have to say that it was a rousing success all the way around. Four 50-year-old-plus men in a house didn't have any problems being around each other for hours on end. We ate some good food and probably drank more than we should. We reconnected with people and made our presence known in the professional audio industry once again. But it was expensive to show at NAMM - booth costs, transportation costs and housing costs were well over $25,000 - a chunk of change for our little company from Germany. The jury is still out if we're going to go back to the NAMM Show in 2025, but if we do we've already said that we'll probably have to send one guy to the awards ceremony because - who knows? We may win another award!
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