In the good old days - when my hair still had less salt than pepper - it was pretty easy to put on a model show. Back then there was still a strong tradition that weddings were held on Saturdays, so fire halls and hotel ballrooms were happy to make a good deal for a Sunday event. A nice letter to Revell, Monogram and AMT would bring several boxes of new kits in the mail to stock the raffle table. Awards were a big expense, but with the typical model contest requiring 100+ plaques, the local trophy shop was usually willing to give a volume discount. And there were always vendors lining up to buy table space.
Today hosting a model show is like jumping out of a perfectly working airplane with little more than a bed sheet tied to your back - it is not a rational act. Full service hotels have been replaced with business hotels with minimal meeting space, leading to brides who are just as happy to get married on Friday or Sunday. Venues with enough space for a contest are fast becoming too expensive for the average model show to afford. And the small-time vendors who were the lifeblood of many local shows have been squeezed hard by Ebay and other internet shops.
Even a simple one day show requires 100s of man-hours to plan, promote and actually put on. The cost for the venue and awards is typically a few $1000 - payable in advance - months before any money comes in from vendors and entrants. And at the end of the day, most shows are lucky to turn a profit of a few $100.
So why do we do it? For some its repaying a debt to the hobby. We have a lot of fun traveling to other clubs' shows, so its only fair that we host a show for them to come to as our guests. For some its a competitive thing: can we put more models on the tables than the year before? And for others its a chance to do something different than our work-a-day jobs. At the Three Rivers show, you'll find an audiologist designing awards, a financial planner running the judging teams, a software engineer hawking vendor tables and a high school teacher straw bossing the whole bunch. OK - maybe having the teacher in charge makes sense...
Whatever the reasons, it has become clear that if you're going to have a contest, it can no longer be just a simple little neighborhood show. Higher prices for everything means a show has to bring in lots of modelers to pay the bills, and successful shows have to continually adjust and grow to keep modelers coming back every year.
For the Three Rivers contest crew, planning for next year's show starts about a month after this year's show wraps up. We've already set the date - March 23rd, 2013 - and booked the location. Soon there will be a meeting in someone's backyard - with chips and a cooler of cold drinks - to kick around what worked, what didn't and what we should do next year. I'll be posting the news here as soon as its all nailed down. In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment here to let us know what you think we're doing right or could do better.
Don Schmitz
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