The recent New England Design-2-Part contract manufacturing tradeshow concluded with exhibitors and attendees feeling good about the future of local manufacturing. The show was held on November 4 & 5, 2009 at the Royal Plaza Trade Center in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Over the two day event, the show floor was consistently busy with nearly 2,000 buyers, many with jobs in hand, looking for new suppliers to help them get their latest projects to market on-time and within budget.
Design-2-Part shows are America’s premier design and contact manufacturing tradeshows for the sourcing of custom parts, components, services, and design. This past show was the 30th anniversary of the New England event.
“The Marlborough show is usually one of our best shows of the year,” said Jerry Schmidt, President of The Job Shop Company, producers of the Design-2-Part Shows. “It is very gratifying for everyone involved with the event and manufacturing in general, to see the amount of business that was conducted during this year’s show. Several attendees thanked us on the way out for holding the show and one engineer in particular commented on how good it felt to see so many attendees and exhibiting companies at the show.
“Another positive sign for the region is something that came out of our post-show attendee survey,” added Mr. Schmidt. “Three times as many respondents indicated that they expected to have an increase in outsourcing projects in 2010 than those who anticipated a decrease. We had being seeing around two times as many positive answers from our previous 2009 shows so this is certainly a good indication for the North East.”
Several exhibitors echoed those findings. “We were impressed with the number of visitors to our booth, and quality of the leads received was above expectation,” said exhibitor Beth Kelley of the Hardware Specialty Company, distributors of fasteners and electronic hardware. “With the increasing use of the internet for information exchange, we were delighted to see attendance at this show large as it was and that person to person business and information exchange is as alive as ever. Looking forward, if this turnout is any indication of the future, things look very positive.”
Maynard Southard of ECHO Industries, specialists of metal forming and deep drawn stampings, added, “We have not found a better way to describe our products and services than the Marlborough Design-2-Part Show. It seemed to us that this year’s traffic included more engineers. Nothing beats letting them handle sample parts and interactively discussing their parts and needs. Let’s hope those engineers are the start of a swelling wave!”
The New England Design-2-Part Show returns again next fall to the Royal Plaza Trade Center on November 3 & 4, 2010. The region’s manufacturers can also attend the Mid-Atlantic Design-2-Part Show next spring on April 14 & 15, 2010 at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, PA.
For information about all of the D2P shows or to register for free show admission, visit www.D2P.com.
