The 2015 Transworld Halloween and Haunted House Show was a HUGE success with over 8000 buyers, 800 exhibitors and tons monsters, masks, costumes, zombies, animations, and much more. Please watch our video that showcases the entire show, interviews, seminars, booths and events. Be sure to subscribe to the NEW Hauntworld Youtube Page for all the latest videos about the haunted house industry.
Now for our review... This years show featured a lot of exhibitors and incredible new products including monsters, zombies, animations, to ticketing companies, social media planners to you name it. The show has clearly grown since its first year if not tripled in size with more buyers and vendors. The show features the most amazing seminars from real professionals to several events including haunted house tours, parties and much more. The show was a huge success!
The Pros and Cons of the 2015 Tradeshow: The pros of the show are clear, the show is just simply growing in both size and attendance. The exhibitors are now creating more detailed booths with more product than ever. The level of detail within the industry is growing. There are now more mask and costume companies which is strongly needed within the haunted house industry. The biggest pro of the show is that its moving more away from just monsters and animations and more into the business side with several insurance companies, ticketing agents, business to business companies, search lights, to marketing experts. The haunted house industry needs more help with the business side than the creative side at this point. The haunt tours where strong people really enjoyed Talon Falls, The Darkness, etc however haunt tours are not the highlight of this event as they are with other regional events.
The Cons have mostly been created by the growing popularity of the tradeshow itself... to many non-buyers are attending the show which actually hurt the show in many ways. For example those people dress up in costume so you don't know if they represent a vendor and or with costume companies on the floor we don't need costume actors running around creating confusion. Secondly actors shouldn't be allowed to attend the show period this is a professional tradeshow not a party and it seems as though this tradeshow is becoming more of a horror convention. Real buyers are bringing way to many people with them which again hurts the vendors because vendors want to talk to the actual buyer not explain how they made something or where to buy materials to someone who is there for idea's or fun. The show needs to limit who they ask to promote the show so we are not promoting the show to the wrong people, way to many facebook groups, etc invited who in turn promoted the show to haunt fans. Vendors if they bring costume monsters should stay close to their booth so many walked around the show you never knew if it was a vendor, which one, or just an actor. Transworld should also consider limitting the amount of events they promote such as haunt tours, parties, etc and keep the focus on the show itself buyers and sellers.
The Transworld show should be fun but first and foremost vendors spend months designing and developing products for the show, then in turn spend thousands tens of thousands to display the products. Vendors want to sell products and talk to actual buyers not non-buyers there for a good time. The shows popularity is starting to hurt the show and turn it from a professional show into a party show and changes should be made.
Several vendors also created very detailed booths, however we feel the mass majority of buyers are mostly interested in the products as most already own haunted houses and build their sets themselves. The shows vendors should focus mostly on bringing the best products to the show, developing the best new scares, costumes and masks. What we heard over and over again was that buyers didn't see the WOW product and we agree. Some vendors might be focused to much on the detail of their booth rather should focus more on the products themselves. I think the industry is waiting for the next DISTORTIONS ELECTIC CHAIR where every single buyer in the building is lined up to buy it. We didn't see a product that blew us away at the Tradeshow however we saw several nice products.
So who had the best new products in our opinion?? Overall you'd have to say everyone did a very good job and depending on what you are looking for all the companies did great. Nothing stands out from the rest, simply put all the companies did a wonderful job representing their company! Kudos to all the haunted house vendors!
Watch our video and please share it!
Look out for Hauntworld The Magazine Issue 40 coming later this Summer.
