Shooting Star Falls From the Vegas Sky

By Heidi Genoist

LAS VEGAS—How does a show go from being a TSW Fastest 50 winner to nearly nonexistent in just two years? The answer isn't entirely clear, but has something to do with a date change and a disagreement between the show's management and one of its vendors.

The 8-year-old MemoryTrends Trade Show for the scrapbook business won Tradeshow Week's annual award for being one of the 50 fastest-growing shows in 2005 and 2006. In 2005, it filled 106,659 net square feet at the Sands Expo & Convention Center and attracted 388 exhibiting firms. That was the year Primedia sold the show to Enthusiast Media. Nobody has released statistics for it since then.

According to a list on MemoryTrends' Web site – and backed up by a quick head-count on the showfloor – only nine exhibitors turned up for the most recent show, held Jan. 31-Feb. 2 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. They were stashed in a back corner of the much larger Photo Marketing Assn. Intl. Convention & Trade Show.

“This year, we had to do a soft launch with MemoryTrends,” said Ted Fox, CEO and executive director of PMA, the Worldwide Community of Imaging Assns. Last summer PMA struck a deal with MemoryTrends' current producer, CK Media, to collocate the two shows.

They must have known it would be challenging for MemoryTrends, which took place in September (for the last time at the Sands), then again in late January, less than two weeks before its biggest competitor, the Craft & Hobby Assn. Annual Convention & Trade Show, Feb. 10-13 in Anaheim.

What they weren't counting on was a little extra resistance to make it even more difficult.

Fox explained: “An issue came up with a third-party vendor that MemoryTrends was using for the show they had in September. There was a disagreement over the terms and obligations between the third-party vendor and MemoryTrends, and we weren't able to resolve that issue to our satisfaction until late November. As a consequence, we fell behind on our deadlines.”

He added that PMA had hoped to market the collocation aggressively to participants at September's MemoryTrends, but “we weren't able to do that because of some legal issues.”

Nobody from CK Media could be reached for comment.

PMA attendees, particularly retailers, liked the idea of collocating the scrapbooking and imaging events.

Don Hite, co-owner of Hite Photo, said, “I do like that they're converging, because we're expanding our store to include (scrapbook items). This makes it easier for us to find everything in one place.”

Melvin Hiller, manning the We R Memory Keepers booth in the tiny MemoryTrends area, said his company's decision to exhibit was based mainly on price. Although it was too early to tell whether he'd get a good return on the investment, he added that We R Memory Keepers would probably continue to participate in both PMA-MemoryTrends and the CHA show, because the company does a lot of albums, which are popular among PMA attendees.

Still, he added, “MemoryTrends is dead, isn't it?”

Jenny Pitchford of the Stamping Station said, “I think more people should have supported MemoryTrends.” She went to the collocated show in hopes of meeting more photo retailers and said that was going fairly well.

All the MemoryTrends exhibitors who spoke with TSW said they would continue to participate in CHA's show.

Fox is hopeful for the future. Asked whether he'd forge ahead with the PMA-MemoryTrends collocation, he said, “Absolutely.”

If they do take place together again next year, the pair will have more distance from CHA's show, scheduled Feb. 8-11 in Anaheim. PMA is slated for March 3-5, again at the LVCC.

Taken From TradeShowWeek.com

Scrapbook: Hannas Celebrate 75th Anniversary

ANNIVERSARY

Hanna

William Sandoe Hanna and Mildred Ruth Swarner Hanna will be celebrating their 75th anniversary at their Gilroy home with friends April 14.

Both were born and raised in Gilroy. William was born July 25, 1911 to Walter and Fannie Hanna. And Mildred was born Dec. 29, 1913 to Roy and Ruth Swarner. The high school sweethearts married April 14, 1934 and had four children - William, Sandra, Roy and Tom.

The Hannas opened a custom fabrication business in 1941. They also grew prunes, walnuts and other orchard crops.

After their children were grown, the Hannas continued to donate their time in the community.

The couple sponsored Rainbow for Gilroy and Sandoe served as a Rainbow Dad. The Hannas were part of the original Gilroy Historical Society where they were instrumental in helping to save the Old City Hall in 1966 and establishing a museum in the building.

They also assisted in saving the Mayock House, getting it moved to Gavilan College. After the 1989 earthquake, they again assisted in helping to save the Old City Hall. They also helped restore the Wheeler Hospital.

The Hannas contributed space for several of the society's large historical objects being restored. Mildred is a volunteer at the Garlic Festival.

Spence

Jack and Evelyn Spence, of Gilroy, celebrated their 50th golden wedding anniversary March 28, 2009.They enjoyed an elegant dinner with their children and grandchildren at Westside Grill followed by cake and a slide show of their 50 years of marriage.

ENGAGEMENT

Padilla-Quintero/Blythe

Tania Padilla-Quintero and Rowdy Blythe recently got engaged. They will be married Oct 16, 2010 at the Willow Creek Chapel in Abilene, Texas. They will have a sunset wedding and reception and a second reception in California.

Time and date for that reception are TBA. Tania, the daughter of Rosalio Quintero Sr. and Lillian Silva, is a homemaker and student at Penn Foster Career School in Austin, Texas, studying child psychology.

She attended Central High School in Morgan Hill. Rowdy, the son of Dale Blythe and Barbara Blythe-Harris, is a tire service technician. He attended Texas Tech and received a degree in computer graphics and animation.

BIRTH

Gonzalez

Cipriana Emily Gonzalez was born March 26, 2009 to Bertha Eugenia Hernandez and Miguel Angel Gonzalez at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital in Hollister. She was 5.5 pounds.

Taken From GilroyDispatch.com

Digital Scrapbooking

A growing number of people are skipping the paper photos and putting their entire scrapbook together online. We found a Sioux Falls mom who says for her, it's the perfect fit.

Melanie Zeman and her husband have four kids under the age of six, and she says for her, traditional scrapbooking just isn't an option. Melanie says, "Last year, a friend of mine who sells Creative Memories came to me and showed me some of her scrapbooks, and I loved them.

I fell in love with them, and I thought, this I could do." Now, Melanie does almost all of her scrapbooking online, with photos her husband downloads to the computer. She says, "There are options of pages that area already set up for you, that you can just pretty much put a picture in the different frames, or you can custom create a page, if you want to."

If you choose to have more creative input, it's a lot like traditional scrapbooking. You pick your background, borders, anything that would personalize your page. But Melanie says you have even more options than going the old-fashioned way. She says, "I can do the entire layout and decide the background paper is not the one I want, and I can change it."

Jennifer Nelson is a consultant for Creative Memories, one of the scrapbook companies that offers digital programs. Scrapbooking has been a passion of hers for more than 10 years. She says, "I thank my dad for that because he was the editor of 3 local newspapers while we were growing up and he always carried a camera with him and felt that every person had a story to tell."

Jennifer says the majority of her clients still scrapbook the traditional way, but she is seeing it catch on. Jennifer says, "If you have trouble getting those prints processed, digital scrapbooking is for you."

Melanie Zeman says one of the things she likes most about digital scrapbooking, is all she needs is her kitchen table and her computer, and she's good to go. She says, "I can just side down and I can work for 5 minutes, or an hour and if my family needs me, I can get up and it's saved and it's still all where I left it when I get back to it."

Melanie's says if anything happens to her completed scrapbooks, all she has to do is re-order a new one. It's something you can't do with a traditional scrapbook. But Jennifer Nelson likes it that way. She says, "I'll probably enjoy traditional scrapbooking for a long time."

But for busy mom Melanie Zeman, the digital way, is the best way. She says, "It's memories for my family that will last forever." Melanie says, besides digital photos, she's able to scan in older pictures, even some of her son's school work into her scrapbooks.

Taken From KSFY.com