When the exhibit-hall lights suddenly went out at the 2018 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), stunned attendees and exhibitors took to social media and shared tongue-in-cheek posts about the blackout. Thankfully, the outage, caused by the effects heavy rain had on one of the Las Vegas Convention Center's transformers, lasted roughly two hours and had minimal impact on stakeholders. Nevertheless, the snafu made headlines around the world and joined the McCormick Place fire of 1967, which destroyed the booths of more than 1,000 National Housewares Manufacturers Association Show exhibitors, as a textbook example of a trade show disaster. Then came the online 2021 International Builders Show (IBS) and Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (KBIS) on Feb. 9 – 12, which, to employ a popular meme, looked at the CES debacle and said, "Hold our beers."

Hosted by the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) and the National Kitchen & Bath Association (NKBA), respectively, IBS and KBIS are billed as the largest trade shows for their industries. Co-located since 2015, the shows feature a robust slate of keynote addresses and educational programming, and the 2020 iterations attracted approximately 2,000 exhibitors (1,400 for IBS and 600 for KBIS).

Due to COVID-19, IBS and KBIS moved to a virtual format for 2021, with IBS adopting the moniker IBSx. Show organizers contracted Emerald X LLC to produce the events, and Convey Services LLC's Cloud Conventions was selected as the show's virtual platform. Much of the usual programming would shift to the virtual realm, and each show featured a digital exhibit hall, although with drastically reduced numbers: approximately 250 exhibitors for IBSx and 155 for KBIS. The exhibit halls would follow what has become the template for virtual trade shows, i.e., entry-level exhibitors receiving a webpage on which they could display photos and videos and chat with attendees, and premium exhibitors being allowed to link to more elaborate, immersive experiences hosted off the platform.

On the morning of Feb. 9, the first official day of both shows, thousands of attendees logged in and attempted to access the exhibit halls and few saw much of anything. Error messages abounded, and those lucky enough to to access a booth noticed extremely slow download speeds, faulty chat functions, and broken links. At 9:14 a.m., KBIS tweeted its apologies for technical issues or site outages and promised an update at noon. (EXHIBITOR could find no evidence of such an update.) Then, at 10:18 a.m., IBSx tweeted that it was experiencing "technical difficulties that are affecting users" experiences. By all accounts, the problems quickly cascaded, and soon both exhibit halls were all but offline. While there were hiccups regarding the shows nonexhibit programming, many of the virtual activities continued as planned. That evening, IBSx emailed attendees that both exhibit halls were inaccessible but show organizers were investigating alternative solutions that may allow the Expo Hall to open in the future. The nail in the coffin came the following afternoon, when show organizers announced that the exhibit halls will not be moving forward as planned this week, but will be postponed to a later date. It was eventually shared that all attendee registration fees would be refunded, and exhibitors received emails stating they would be contacted by their show reps to review refund options.

So it could be reasonably said that from an exhibiting standpoint, KBIS and IBSx were a combined catastrophe with far more detrimental effects than CES 2018, yet it drew little attention outside of the construction and design industries and didn't have stakeholders posting pithy tweets. But the $64,000 question remained: What went wrong, and who was to blame? EXHIBITOR contacted reps from the NAHB, NKBA, Emerald, and Convey, none of whom would answer our questions on the record, meaning that the only official clue was a statement in the FAQ section of IBSx's website: "Unfortunately, our platform provider was not able to fulfill its obligations to meet the traffic capacity required for the show." It seems that show organizers are pointing the finger at Convey's software, but according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation, what ultimately brought KBIS and IBSx tumbling down was a woefully out-of-date piece of hardware called a hypervisor that Convey procured from its server host. (Convey does not own the physical servers and hardware needed to run the events using its platform. Rather, it leases this equipment.) This hypervisor, per the source, was not capable of handling the massive bandwidth needed to facilitate KBIS and IBSx simultaneously, resulting in a server failure. In effect, the buck was passed once more in a chain of entities: KBIS and IBSx to Emerald, Emerald to Convey, and Convey to its unnamed server host. (EXHIBITOR's source would not share which company leased the allegedly 10-year-old hypervisor to Convey, but EXHIBITOR has seen evidence that at least some web and/or image hosting may have been provided by Amazon Web Services.)

Regardless of who is to blame, KBIS and IBSx exhibitors were left hurting, and unlike show organizers, many that EXHIBITOR contacted were eager to talk. The stories they relayed featured recurring themes: early signs of trouble (e.g., exhibitors unable to log in to their exhibits before the show, a pre-show crash of the staging website, a last-minute change to the live-chat function, etc.), poor communication from show management, and a total sense of frustration. (All of the companies EXHIBITOR communicated with via phone and email asked to not be named due to possible repercussions.)

One IBSx exhibitor stated that he emailed his show rep early Tuesday morning to report that his team was having difficulty logging in and that key elements were missing from his company's virtual booth. He and his sales reps were rendered idle and in the proverbial dark until a 3:00 p.m. boilerplate email from show management officially stated there were technical difficulties. The show was a complete wash with no new business opportunities. Another KBIS exhibitor shared that reps for a multibillion-dollar corporation had to resort to using their company's consumer-facing website during Zoom sales meetings – and couldn't showcase upcoming products – because all of their literature and materials were housed on the defunct servers.

But perhaps the most scathing summary came from an IBSx exhibitor who called the show "a complete waste of time and a complete waste of money." After several unsuccessful attempts to contact his show rep to inquire about what was happening, he gave up and was unable to conduct any business. This wasn't this exhibitor's first time participating in a virtual trade show, but he claims it's his last. "I can control my situation when I'm there in person [on a show floor]," he says. "But this virtual piece, I'm literally putting my business in someone else's hands, and they're not a trusted supplier. The technology for virtual events needs to be developed so it mimics an in-person event as much as possible."

On March 1, IBSx sent an email to attendees and exhibitors stating, in part, the following: "The NAHB and NKBA have worked tirelessly to find a solution to overcome the technological points of failure of DCW's [Design and Construction Week's] virtual expo platform. Unfortunately, our internal teams and external consultants have been unable to resolve the technical issues pertaining to the exhibitor platform in a timely manner. As a result, NAHB and NKBA have concluded that it will not be possible to recover the virtual expo booth experience of Design & Construction Week for 2021. … NAHB and NKBA are committed to fulfilling our promises to you, which include full refunds of all exhibit booth package and registration fees. We also remain committed to promoting our valued exhibitors and you will be contacted soon by your sales representatives about next steps."