The 1980s were the time of the yuppie, acid-washed jeans, leg warmers, conservatism, an actor becoming President of the United States, the discovery of HIV, the Falklands War, computers, Star Wars, glasnost, the Tiananmen Square massacre, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the explosions of the Challenger spacecraft and Chornobyl. John Lennon and Indira Gandhi were also killed during this decade of excess. By this time, tradeshows were being held continuously in many countries. The history of tradeshows in the 1980s is covered in this article.
Also Read: Brief History of Trade Shows
In a paper he wrote in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist who made the World Wide Web while working at CERN, wrote about the idea for the invention that changed the world for good. His goal was to provide a safe and easy way for scientists in universities or scientific institutes across the world to share information. His second paper, in conjunction with Belgian systems engineer Robert Cailliau, described a “hypertext project” called “WorldWideWeb” in which a “web” of “hypertext documents” could be viewed by “browsers.”
However, it would take the next decade before the internet would make an impact on our lives beyond the original idea and paper. We’ll discuss how the internet changed event management later.
For now, we’ll focus on shows, etc., that demonstrate the developments and evolution of the sector.
In 1982, a new property was bought, and the California Farm Equipment Show and International Exposition moved there. Together with the Department of Commerce, the show had found a way for US export trade to grow through the show. We see the continuation of government interests overlapping with federal and business owners.
The Show directors created a non-profit corporation called International Agri-Centre Inc. to purchase a portion of a farm of 130 acres, of which 80 would be used for the Show and 70 for parking, which would become the new showgrounds in Tulare, which is in the heart of agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley in California.
The new place was the first place in the United States that was built just for an agricultural show. It had places to show off machines, animals, and other things. For the first time, it charged an entrance fee to help pay for the cost of buying the land and the money it took to build the site. Their investment was worth it, as a record 1,024 companies exhibited at the show that year.
In the 1980s, two specialised fairs were held instead of one more general world fair as in previous years.
The 1981 World Fair took place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. This was the first world fair to be hosted in a country that had previously been part of the USSR. The theme was “Hunting, Fishing, and Men in Society.” Unfortunately, there is no information available on visitor or exhibitor numbers.
The Specialised World Fair held in 1982 was the Knoxville International Energy Exposition, registered with the BEI with the theme “Energy Turns the World.” It ran for 7 months with over 11 million visitors. Like other World Fairs of Class 1, this one required a vast area of land. The Specialised Fair rejuvenated a 70-acre disused railyard.
You may well be thinking, “Why Knoxville?” In the organisers’ proposal, they cited the association with Knoxville with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the University of Tennessee created a triumvirate as a combined centre for energy research and development.
As with other fairs, one particular structure called the Sunsphere has become an iconic symbol of Knoxville, much like the Space Needle in Seattle. It also has an observation deck but no revolving restaurant.
Also Read: History of Tradeshows in The 1970s
The Knoxville Fair saw record visitor numbers for a US fair, with just under 12 million visitors. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be sufficient to prevent making a loss which they did of $46 million, which was only finally paid in 2007.
The participating exhibitors included 22 nations, 7 US states, and more than 50 corporations. A highlight of the Hungarian pavillion was the largest Rubik’s Cube. The Rubik’s Cube is a 3D puzzle that, in 1980, won a special award for Best Puzzle as the German Game of the Year. It was THE craze of the 80s globally that was so popular that between 1980 and 1983, more than 200 million units were sold.
The British Toy and Hobby Fair held throughout the 1980s saw a number of best-selling children’s toys launched, including Rubik’s Cube, Masters of the Universe, the Care Bears, the Cabbage Patch Dolls, and My Little Pony, which became the best-selling girl’s toy ever. This is a B2B show that allows well-established companies, as well as start-ups, to launch and display new toys to traders.
The Daily Mail Ideal Home Expo started in 1908 to get people talking and thinking about how to make homes better. It has since morphed over the years into a DIY and décor consumer show. It was also very smart to include the House of the Future, which showed what major designers and architects thought our ideal home could and should look like.
We can see how the shell schemes launched at EuroShop1966 have become the norm relatively quickly in the image below of a DIY home trade show in Ireland. You can see how the shell scheme looks more like a game of Tetris than our current format. I think they look great, as I like the different colours, and I also like the gap at the top of the shell where the name is displayed rather than the fascia option used today. It makes it look more open and welcoming.
The other area that saw tremendous growth is the medical field. As science developed, so too did niches to explain, share, and understand discoveries and their implications for our lives, such as Alec Jeffreys’ discovery of DNA fingerprinting in 1984 at the University of Leicester. His goal was to study how inherited illnesses are passed down through families. Not long after his discovery, the first case it was used for was an immigration case. After that, it was used to find Colin Pitchfork, a serial killer whose DNA allowed him to be found. It led to the UK National Criminal Intelligence DNA Database being set up in 1995. It is the biggest representation of a country’s DNA in the world, with the DNA of about 10% of its people printed.
Another area where progress was made was in ophthalmology, specifically with eye surgery. Svyatoslov Fyodorov, a Russian, came up with radial keratotomy, which was a technique that came before Lasik and was first used in the 1990s.
MTV was launched in 1981. Why was this important? It helped people find bands and gave them a bigger audience than just the people in their area. However, it also sparked the concept of “musician branding.” What is the overall appearance of your video, including the hair, clothing, backdrop, theme, and so on? Bands rose to prominence in ways that no other artists had before them.
The DNA invention created a few new areas of study, a host of new jobs, changed policing, and spawned a myriad number of TV series, but so did Lasik and the music video; as one could ask, what would YouTube be today without music videos?
There is also a flip side to the inventions that are so aptly demonstrated by Kodak. In 1987, they launched the Fling, a disposable camera. It went from selling 3 million units in 1988 to 21.5 million in 1992 at an average price of $6. But Kodak was sowing the seeds of its demise because they forgot they were in business, and it’s not about inventing for the sake of inventing. In the 1970s, they dominated, with 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales. I will share more about Kodak in the 2000s article.
As I’m researching and writing this series of articles, I realise that trade shows have played a key role in providing a platform for innovation, not just at that time but with hindsight to see the roles they played decades later as technology evolved.
A case in point is the Chicago Automobile Trade Show in 1980. Amectran (American Ecological Transport) was an electric car manufacturer that displayed the XR1, where they received 22,000 orders with a deposit of $1000 over 2 days at the show. A precursor to Tesla only 30 years earlier.
Another development in the trade show and event sector is the beginning of global event management businesses. Marcus Evans began in 1983 in the UK.
In the 1980s, there were a lot of new ideas that led to new industries that we now take for granted. These new industries would need B2B and consumer shows as platforms for the inevitable changes that happen over time because people want to get better so they can get more of the market than their competitors.
Read Next: History of the tradeshows in the 1990s
