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The recent (July 31 - August 3) ASD Military Tactical Outdoor Show (more on that moniker later) did not resonate as well with army/navy exhibitors and buyers as had been anticipated.

Despite the advantage for buyers of walking a fully consolidated show held only at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the culprit for mil-surp-related exhibitors was a poor turnout of army/navy store buyers.
For exhibitors who, over the years have cultivated an ASD Show customer base of non-military-oriented buyers, the show was somewhat more successful.

“The show was not bad for us. We would have loved to have seen some more army/navy retailers, but we got to see some key accounts and met a lot of new dealers,” according to John Ottaviano of Rothco.
Rothco has taken advantage of access to a wide range of non-military buyers that has become the focus of the ASD Show - its status as a surpie-centric show ended a long time ago.

However, Rothco, like most of the other army/navy-related companies that still exhibit at ASD, has significantly reduced its boot footprint and the number of personnel attending the show.

As the cost of exhibiting at the show has boldly increased over the past 10 years and the return on investment has waned, companies have naturally scaled back their involvement.

Go-to show or no?
It seems like each year, the ASD Show becomes more of a marginal asset to the army/navy market. The rise of the Army Navy Military Expo and the SHOT Show as more targeted trade shows has impacted the importance of the ASD Show tremendously (only for the army/navy and law enforcement buyers). Most of this trend can simply be attributed to the natural ebb and flow of business and the the expansion of the scope of the ASD Show combined with the reduction in size of the army/navy market.

It was hoped that the summer ASD Show might offer an opportunity to settle in as a mid-year reset for army/navy buyers looking to buy for the holiday seasons and for the Fall; essentially the ASD Show would become an in-between show for the January ANM Expo-SHOT annual events.

Speculation on the underwhelming presence of army/navy buyers at ASD (pre-show, the attendance estimates were much higher) seems to have centered around a renewed sense of gloom about the national economy; the fact that the scary debt ceiling-deficit reduction slugfest in Washington was just peaking at showtime probably didn’t help buyer attendance numbers either. As an accessory to the crime, travel costs to Las Vegas were particularly high during this time period, further suppressing turnout.

Nice to be niche
Army/navy suppliers whose product lines enjoy some niche market appeal seem to fare much better than companies whose product lines are more generalized and commodity-focused. Companies that specialize in hard-to-find or exclusive products have seemed to make their ASD investment justifiable.