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Showing posts from June, 2012

Las Vegas: nothing, and everything, has changed

I have been going to trade shows for nearly 40 years.  That is a mind-bending long time when I stop to think about it, but it does have its advantages.  It allows some stripping away of artifacts, distractions that can mask reality. We all speak of how much the "world" has changed, and it has.  Over those years we have acquired the PC (and lost secretaries?), cell phones,  hi-def TV, digital photography.  The Internet has revolutionized our lives. We have Amazon, Youtube, Ebay and Facebook.  We have a billion sites offering a trillion products and services.  We have blogs - like this one.  The software selling business is going away, and so are many newspapers.  Privacy is a thing of the past. In our industry, whole channels of distribution have disappeared (think traditional distributors, catalog showrooms); others have shrunk in number to a handful of giants (think mall chains, discounters and department stores).  The Internet has given us countless on-line jewelry stor