Saturdays are traditionally the busiest day of AEE, and the 2005 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo was no exception: when the doors opened for fans today there was a line that winded down the convention hall, through the corridor connection the convention center with the Venetian casino, and ended just shy of the gallery of stores that marks the beginning of Venetian territory.
Fan attendance figures won't be released before tomorrow, the final day of the show, but the consensus opinion is that once again, the show has drawn more fans the ever before.
“This is ridiculous. I'm amazed every year at the size of the crowd, but this is really something,” Mitch Spinelli, owner of Acid Rain, told AVN.com. “Of course, I say that every year.”
However, the rush of fans congests the aisles between booth, especially when a porn star stops to pose for eager photographers and the noise can drown out conversations, impeding business deals.
While each day of the show has a limited time dedicated to trade only, only the first day was entirely dedicated to members of the trade, the first time in the event's history that the opening day did not include fan hours.
The extended trade-only time was very popular with exhibitors, many of whom agreed that the extension allowed them more time to conduct business.
“It's a great idea. Its just too busy to get anything done when the fans rush in,” Jon Blitt, general manager for Doghouse Digital said. “The exhibitor day allows us to talk to our existing customer base, as well as new customers. As a matter of fact, I just picked up a new customer just now.”
Nectar Entertainment chose not to have any female performers sign at their booth, the most common tactic used to attract fans to a company's booth. “We're really looking to do business here, more than anything else,” Nectar's Sean Logan said. ”Attention from fans is nice, it lets you know that you're appreciated, but its too chaotic and detracts from our main purpose here: taking care of customers, and gaining new ones.”
Bang Productions, the creators of the popular Internet series Bang Bus, were exhibiting for the first time and enjoyed both aspects of the show. “We did great on the first day, we were welcomed by the distributors attending here, and we wrote a lot orders,” Penn, COO of Bang said. “But we're having a lot of fun with the fans as well, drawing crowds for our contests. That helps demonstrate our popularity.”
Some exhibitors, such as Shane's World, sharing a booth with their distributor New Sensations, created specialized versions of their promotions that they limited to the trade. In Shane's World's case, they passed out T-shirts with their company logo to people who dropped by their booth. Later in the day, people seen wearing a Shane's World T-shirt were invited to spin a wheel that will determine the nature of the prize a person will receive, anything from free DVDs to a T-shirt.
“We wanted our presence out there as much as possible,” Jennie Grant, owner of Shane's World, told AVN.com. “2005 will be a big year for us and we want people to see that we're everywhere.”
Jennie Grant, owner of Shane's World, told AVN.com that the contest, which will run for the duration of the show, was tweaked in light of the industry-only attendance today. While DVDs will be given out everyday, Shane's World ran a special version of their contest for the first day: the company offered 100 DVDs as a top prize.
"One DVD doesn't really do much for a retailer, but we thought 100 would be a quantity they would appreciate," Grant explained. "And I don't think a consumer really needs that many at once."
