In response to the pressure on retailers, CEA for the first time has set aside $1 million to help defray travel and hotel costs for thousands of retail buyers, the folks who decide which products stores will sell in the coming year.
Individual manufacturers are also rushing to aid hobbled merchants. Belkin, the Compton maker of peripherals for iPods and computers, is cutting back its spending at CES and using the savings to fund joint promotions next year to drive consumers into stores.
Belkin spokeswoman Melody Chalaban said the company would send half as many employees to CES as in past years and would forgo an elaborate booth in favor of meetings in hotel suites. "We've exhibited at CES for as long as I remember," she said. "It is safe to say we'll be saving several hundred thousand dollars by doing this."
Panasonic, one of the first exhibitors at CES and among its largest, said it would eschew entertainment such as comedic skits to focus on more pragmatic presentations aimed at helping retailers better sell their products.
"We don't think this economic environment is a time for song, dance and entertainment," said Bob Greenberg, Panasonic's vice president of brand marketing.
Other companies will have similarly somber approaches at CES, said Kurt Scherf, principal analyst at Parks Associates, a technology consulting firm in Dallas.
"CES will be much more strategic for companies," Scherf said. "Employees are being sent with very specific goals. The idea of attending just to see a bunch of cool stuff is not going to play very well in this economy."
Cisco, for example, canceled plans for an exhibit on the show floor and instead plans to hold meetings at the Venetian hotel.
"We will have the same number of meetings and product demonstrations, but in a less public venue," said Ken Wirth, vice president of consumer marketing for the San Jose computer networking giant. "Our activities at CES will be much more targeted."
Somewhat counterintuitively, CEA says it has no problem with a bit of austerity. That's partly because over-the-top displays helped kill Comdex, the big kahuna of tech conventions that imploded after its 2003 show. Companies, struggling to recover from the dot-com crash, balked at spending money on a trade show that had become too big to manage.
In that sense, CEA said it welcomes the drop in attendance, which peaked in 2006 with more than 152,000 people.
"We're trying to manage the size of the show so that it will be easier to navigate," said CEA's Oxman. The group started charging a $100 registration fee for those who sign up after Nov. 1 to discourage people who don't work in the industry.
"The value proposition we make is that you can meet the entire consumer electronics industry in one place, at one time," Oxman said. "The average attendee last year held 12 meetings at CES."
Such meetings will continue to form the bedrock of CES, analysts said -- even if they're not held in elaborately appointed booths with a nonstop lineup of Vegas show-style entertainment.
"This is still the largest technology show we have in the U.S.," said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies in Campbell, Calif. "Attendance may be down, but its impact will be just as important as ever."
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alex.pham@latimes.com
