ACCM–by the Numbers

Perhaps the Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants is best measured by the number of attendees expected to walk the show floor this year. Show organizers anticipate more than 4,500 participants at this year’s ACCM, up slightly from last year. In the Exhibit Hall, 240 companies will be represented at 355 booths.

On the programming side, we’ve got you covered with 275 speakers at more than 90 sessions in eight content tracks covering a broad range of multichannel topics, from business-to-business and circulation strategies to management and operations to online marketing.

And don’t forget the one-on-one expert consultations and hands-on labs. In addition to today’s Catalog Critiques, E-mail Marketing Creative Critiques, and Website Critiques, there are the Website Usability Labs, where pros will review Websites throughout the show. And there’s more: the always-popular Multichannel Medical Center, also scheduled to run throughout ACCM; Search Engine Marketing Labs slated for tomorrow and Wednesday; and an Online Merchandising Lab tomorrow morning. Today also saw our inaugural Web Analytics Tools Lab and Tech Tour of Web Analytics Tools.

Also new this year: In-Depth Workshops covering online testing, search engine marketing, catalog production, customer databases, and integration marketing, scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

This year ACCM boasts four Executive Forums, including a discussion with keynoter David McQuillen, vice president, customer experience and voice of the customer at Credit Suisse. And as always, we have two keynote presentations, the Power Forum, and the Annual Multichannel Merchant Awards luncheon. (Note: The Awards luncheon will be held on Tuesday this year instead of Wednesday, so don’t miss it!)

This year marks ACCM’s first return to Boston since 2001, as well as the conference’s first time at the new Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC). But we’re in good hands: The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority in 2006 hosted 145 events at the BCEC. Hopefully you brought comfy walking shoes to cover the BCEC’s 516,000 sq. ft. of contiguous exhibit space, 160,000 sq. ft. of flexible meeting space, and 40,020 sq. ft. Grand Ballroom. Fortunately there are also 32 escalators and 12 elevators, two pedestrian sky bridges spanning the exhibit halls, and access to any part of the building in no more than eight minutes.

Just how big is the BCEC? The largest building in New England, at 1,600 ft. in length it’s as long as the Empire State Building is high.

And if you’re feeling hungry, the BCEC kitchen has 46 ovens and combination ovens, 22 ice machines, 22 walk-in refrigerator boxes, and three institutional-size dishwashers. There are four moveable conveyor-belt units that allow workers to plate up to 4,000 meals in an hour, and they can brew 500 gallons of coffee at one time. So you have no excuse for nodding off in sessions—not that you ever would here!

ACCM by the Numbers

For all the numbers that show organizers like to throw at you, the biggest number this year is one. This is the first Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants (ACCM).

Granted, for the previous 22 years, this same conference—copresented by MULTICHANNEL MERCHANT magazine and the Direct Marketing Association—existed as the Annual Catalog Conference. The name change acknowledges that only a very few companies use a print catalog as their sole marketing channel. Companies that started with a print catalog or a brick-and-mortar store or as a manufacturer or an online-only merchant have become multichannel merchants to satisfy the shopping preferences of the customer.

But back to the numbers… This year’s conference offers nine content-rich session tracks, including one especially for retailers new to print and Web cataloging. There are six Executive Forums, and two keynote presentations. All told, 175 speakers will be discussing a broad range of multichannel topics, from search engine marketing to catalog production, from cross-channel merchandising to b-to-b creative.

What’s more, 12 consultants were scheduled to review dozens of catalogs during the Catalog Critiques earlier today, while another six were plugged in and ready to review attendees’ Websites.

In the Exhibit Hall, 262 companies will be on display at 420 booths. That’s up slightly from last year’s show, at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL, where 260 companies occupied 419 booths. During the three-day event, show organizers expect some 4,400 attendees to walk the Exhibit Hall floor.

As for the venue, Chicago’s McCormick Place attracts 3 million visitors annually. It consists of three buildings: the North Building, the South Building, and Lakeside Center. The buildings have a total of 2.2 million sq. ft. of exhibit space, including 1.6 million contiguous sq. ft., making it the nation’s largest convention center—or roughly the equivalent of 36 football fields. Among Lakeside Center’s features: a 45,000-sq.-ft. ballroom, a north-to-south divider wall in the 300,000-sq.-ft.exhibit hall, an outdoor waterfall cascading from Level 3 to ground level, and the recently renovated 4,249-seat Arie Crown Theater.