Earlier this week it was announced that Apprise Media would acquire Canon Communications.
What's interesting to me about this is the backstory on how Canon Communications built itself into a significant media company with judiscious purchases of scraps from Reed and unproven start-ups from McGraw-Hill. Also interesting is conjecutring on whether Apprise Media will be looking for more acquisitions in the same market.
Only a decade ago, Canon had but one franchise: medical device manufacturing. But it was a strong franchise. They were able to launch a product tabloid off the success of their primary editorial publication and were also able to launch two regional clones off the strength of their flagship show.
And that franchise still exists today, stronger than ever and now with international versions of the domestic shows, publications and web sites.
But over the past decade, Canon has added to its arsenal in an intriguing way - by buying "damaged goods" and acquiring startups before they have a chance to become competitors.
If you've been in the industry for more than a few years, you'll recall that Reed once challenged PMMI for supremacy in the packaging world with its WestPack/EastPack/SouthPack franchise. That was before exhibitors revolted against Reed over costs associated with those shows. They imploded very quickly in the late 90s and Canon was there to pick up the scraps.
In 1995, I was working with Rob Ingraham's Exposition Excellence with the charge to launch four shows within one year. One of the shows I'd convinced Rob to do was a Boston-based electronics event to be called OEM Expo. At that time there were significant contract issues with the IEEE's Electro shows, which was the category leader. And that show was suffering.
I also convinced Rob to "reanimate" Reed's dead Design/West show. Reed had stopped producing the coastal clones to its National Design show two years earlier. Rob's organization was such that it could profitably run smaller shows where Reed couldn't. He and I both felt that if we could get Design/West going again, then Design/East could follow the next year.
Additionally, we looked into going after Canon directly with a Midwest event in the medical instrumentional design arena.
While these shows were minor successes for Rob, he was not in a position to continue to run them and sold the lot to McGraw-Hill, which in turn, found operating these small shows not worth their time and effort. However, Canon decided they were worth it and bought the lot, along with Modern Plastics magazine.
Ten years later, none of the abovementioned shows could be described as wild successes. On their own, they are simply unexciting middle-of-the-pack niche events.
But when viewed as tactical components of an overall strategy, these shows complement Canon's franchise and expertise in the medical device niche, allowing for what is essentially a vertically integrated media strategy: design/electronics/manufacturing/packaging for medical devices and pharmaceuticals.
None of the shows I worked on with Rob cost more than a quarter-million to produce at the time. But those shows were never meant to make a lot of money, either. They were created in order to be flipped immediately for cash and whatever small multiple was possible.
There are still many among us who've been in the industry awhile and maintain a dream of creating a show in order to sell it for a big multiple. But keep in mind that the acquisitions market has changed. Not every show will find a buyer.
Whereas in the 80s and 90s shows were bought almost exclusively on the basis of profitability, today's buyers are likely to consider strategic fit as important as profit.
If you are really considering launching a show for the primary purpose of selling it, you have to know who's buying in the market where you want to launch. And if they're buying. Otherwise you might find yourself managing a show for longer than you planned.
Which, of course, is how you should be thinking anyway.
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