It couldn’t be more fitting than the week of GIE+EXPO to dust off the pages of a story about the show from 10 years ago.
Titled “GIE here to stay” by then-Editor-in-Chief Ron Hall, this week’s throwback post is from the November 2003 issue of Landscape Management. It breaks down the logistics of the show in terms of who hosts it and the number of people it draws as well as it’s significance to the Green Industry. And while the trade show’s importance hasn’t faltered over the years, some of those logistics have.
Here are three notable changes to the show since 2003.
1. Hosts
In 2003, the GIE was hosted by the Professional Grounds Management Society (PGMS), the Professional Lawn Care Association of America (PLCAA) and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA). (The latter two merged into the Professional Landcare Network, aka PLANET, in 2005.) In 2007, the GIE paired with the International Lawn, Garden & Power Equipment Exposition, hosted by the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI), to form the GIE+EXPO. Today it’s hosted by PLANET, OPEI and PGMS and co-locates with the trade show Hardscape North America annually in Louisville.
2. Amount of show space
Compared to the 110,900-square-foot space of the Cervantes Convention Center in St. Louis, where the GIE was held in 2003, the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, Ky., which houses this year’s GIE+EXPO, has 500,000 square feet of showroom.
3. Number of registrants
“The GIE is getting too big for its britches,” Hall wrote in 2003. And he was right. A decade ago the GIE drew a crowd of more than 6,000 people, including exhibitors. Last year’s GIE+EXPO attracted 17,500 registrants.
