Business in Vancouver's "How I Did It" feature asks business leaders to explain how they achieved a goal in the face of entrepreneurial challenges. In this week's issue, Vali Marling – who is leaving the Fraser Valley Trade & Exhibition Centre (Tradex) as director of operations to become general manager of the new Anvil Centre in New Westminster – talks about how she turned around a struggling venue.
"We were originally part of BC Pavilion Corp. [PavCo], with the intent that [Tradex] would eventually go to the City of Abbotsford. [PavCo] had the Vancouver Convention Centre, BC Place. During that time, I think there was only one year that the venue actually made a profit. We made a profit in year one [end of 2002].
"Venue cost is a large part of it. The cost of operating a BC Place stadium for the day and operating a Tradex for the day is very different. They had two venues in downtown Vancouver that cost a lot more to operate, so that's where the events were directed through PavCo. It was difficult for this venue to compete with an event that could be in Vancouver. That completely changed when Tourism Abbotsford took over.
"When we were handed over to the City of Abbotsford, they took the venue on with the intent to close it down within a year. The city owns the venue and Tourism Abbotsford has the management contract to run the facility.
"The understanding was that the City of Abbotsford was given the venue and that they would run it as long as it did not cost them money for the day-to-day operations. If the venue did cost money to operate, the City of Abbotsford would take the building and use it for something else.
"We knew that this was a great venue, easy to move in and out of, much less money to operate than some of the Vancouver venues, and it really filled a gap for events. We proved that there was a market that was being missed: the small to mid-sized consumer shows.
"A huge reason we were so successful with events is that we put together a strategic plan and we stuck to it. It was good marketing, it was exceptional customer service and we were doing things most event venues don't.
"From the time I contract an event, I hand it over to an event manager, and they stay with the clients all the way through. We decided we would have the event manager go all the way through with the client so they're working with the same person and have developed a relationship. That was huge for us.
"We went from 44 events to over 77 events the first year. At the end of 2004, we were sitting at about 320,000 people through the venue that year. When we took over the venue there were 275,000 people through the building.
"We worked with several of our clients to help them build attendance. I got to the point with selling events that I had no weekends left to sell, so I took my marketing budget and put that toward attendance building. So we've increased attendance. The clients increase their exhibitor base because there are more bodies coming through the door, and we've literally run out of space.
"We're working on expansion. We would like 100,000 square feet to add to the building."
