Strong International Presence Brings Added Business Boost To PRI Trade Show
A large international presence helped propel the 27th Annual Performance Racing Industry (PRI) Trade Show to one of its busiest Fridays ever at the Indiana Convention Center.
This year’s Show attracted buyers and attendees from 70-plus countries, including several emerging markets that came to Indianapolis in impressive numbers.
“Our international attendance continues to be strong at the PRI Show,” said Francisque Savinien, PRI’s director of Global Sales and Marketing. “We have exhibitors here from every corner of the world – Australia, Argentina, Sweden, Japan, Estonia and more. We have buyers here from all over the globe, and are hosting a large group from FIA Europe.”
Among the international contingent was Xia Qing, who promotes the largest racing series in China – the China Touring Car Championship – and is vice chairman of the Federation of Automotive Sports, which oversees all motorsports in China.
“This is our first time at PRI and we are here looking at the trends of the motorsports industry,” relayed Qing. “We’re also looking to develop a cooperation between PRI and the Chinese motorsports industry.”
The Trade Show also played host to a variety buyers and potential future exhibitors from across the globe.
“We are an engineering company that works in all facets of motorsports, and we’re here looking for potential suppliers and partners,” said Mauricio Toro of C2R2 Engineering in Colombia. “We’re also doing a little scouting on potentially coming over to the Show as an exhibitor and selling our products to companies around the world. It’s been a very nice show. It’s huge, and my feet are sore from walking around the show, but I think we’ve made some very nice contacts for the future of our company.”
The international presence was seen all over, in fact, as Hoosier Tire brought distributors from Japan, Germany, Thailand and England to take part in the Show, while SuperFlow debuted the latest ROTOTEST dynamometer from Sweden.
On Friday, buyers from all over flocked to PRI’s famed Machinery Row, which helped power the day’s brisk booth business.
“The traffic has been good today, a little bit overwhelming in the morning, but after that it’s been steady all day,” relayed Scott Giles of SuperFlow, which featured its engine dynamometers. “We’ve seen some of our long-term customers here looking to see what’s new, as well as people starting new shops looking for new machinery. We’ll definitely leave here with some good orders in hand.”
Similar accounts were heard up and down the aisles, with some of the most advanced precision machining equipment on full display and providing live demonstrations.
“The show’s been very, very good,” offered Drew Patey of Safety Kleen. “Thursday we finished with a real bang, and it’s continued today. We met with a lot of customers and things are going great. There are serious customers here, and we’ve received a lot of interest in our large JRI machines that can minimize a builder’s time in cleaning up engine blocks.”
Activity also proved strong beyond the exhibit halls. Sanctioning bodies including IndyCar, the International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) and ARCA were among several others that made their presence felt at the show. And for the second straight day a variety of IndyCar personalities were present in the organization’s booth, with Scott Dixon, Bobby and Graham Rahal, Sarah Fisher, Ed Carpenter and Pippa Mann on hand, along with Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles.
A morning press conference by IHRA packed the site’s Media Center. “There are a lot of exciting things going on here today,” said Steve Cole of IHRA. “We made six announcements here on Friday morning in a pretty big press conference. What better show to do it for the racing industry than PRI? We put all of our money into PRI, bought a big booth here, brought all of our executives here, and felt like if anyone was going to embrace us, it was going to be PRI, and we’ve received a great response.”
Stock car sanction ARCA’s day included a major introduction: “We unveiled our new car, our new body and our new engine, and it’s been well received,” communicated George Mergen. “We’re excited to bring it here. We’ve seen a lot of traffic at our booth, visiting with a lot of our customers, sponsors and race teams.”
This year’s PRI Trade Show played host to exhibits from over 1,100 racing companies occupying 3,200 booths, and attract tens of thousands of racing professionals.
For more information, please visit:
www.pri2014.com
Or contact:
mail@performanceracing.com
