Maine brands hard to find at seafood show
Photo/Whit Richardson
The scene at the International Boston Seafood Show held in March
The first year Charlie Langston attended the International Boston Seafood Show as COO of the new startup Shucks Maine Lobster, he found himself walking the floor with CEO John Hathaway and a cooler full of raw lobster meat, which they would show to interested buyers.
“We’ve come a long way since then,” Langston says.
This year, Shucks was one of only a small handful of Maine companies that had a booth on the floor of the trade show, which attracts more than 17,000 buyers and sellers from 90 countries. The five or so Maine companies with booths were lost in a sea of thousands, and overshadowed by pavilions promoting seafood companies from Alaska, Louisiana and Florida.
Other Mainers in the seafood business will attend, but not pay the extra expense to set up as an exhibitor. They’ll walk the trade show floor to make new contacts and get face time with existing clients. The number of companies actually incurring the marketing expense to set
up shop on the floor has decreased in the past several years, according to Marianne LaCroix, marketing manager for the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, which has a booth every year.
After accounting for the travel, meals and hotels, it probably costs Shucks Maine Lobster close to $10,000 to attend the show and set up a 10-foot by 10-foot booth, Langston says. It’s the company’s single largest marketing expense of the year. They’ve thought about not going, but the idea is always quickly dismissed. “We have to go. It’s the biggest show in the U.S. And if you’re not there, where are you?” Langston asks. “Are you real?”
Attending each year since 2006 has paid off, Langston says. That first year, buyers weren’t sure what to make of the company and took a wait-and-see-if-they-survive approach, Langston says. The company has been doubling each year, and even grew during the recent recession. Buyers have noticed. “We literally had people say ‘We’ve been watching you for a few years and decided to talk to you now.’”
Langston says 40% of the contacts made at the show — “40% of the value,” he says — turn into new business, while the rest of the time offers an opportunity to reaffirm and strengthen existing relationships with customers.
The show also offers a chance to see what’s new in the seafood business. Shucks sends some of its operations employees to check out the newest seafood processing equipment. “So, we’re also going as a customer,” Langston says.
Michael Marceau, a vice president of The Lobster Co. in Kennebunkport, has been attending the show since 1988, its second year in existence. This year, the company has a small booth. Marceau stands behind a glass display case filled with clams and halibut filets. The main reason he attends? “Obtain more customers. It’s easy.”
For the first 15 years, The Lobster Co. had a booth at the show, but then it stopped. Marceau says they didn’t really need one anymore, and it was enough for him to attend just to meet with existing clients. What’s changed? The company experienced a large drop in exports to Asia since the summer of 2008 when red tide was linked with toxic lobster tomalley. The federal warnings that ensued had nothing to do with lobster meat, but the marketing damage was done, Marceau says. This year the company wanted a presence at the show to line up more Asian customers. “Make no mistake, it was the tomalley,” Marceau says. “That’s why we have the booth.”
By Monday afternoon, Marceau had picked up two new customers in Seoul, South Korea, and had met with other prospective clients from Japan. “We’ve had a great show,” he says.
A need for branding cohesion
For several years, the Maine Lobster Promotion Council organized a Maine pavilion — known as Maine Street — that collected all the Maine companies together under one banner, but the effort ended several years ago when the number of Maine companies involved couldn’t sustain it, says LaCroix.
She says she’d like to organize another Maine pavilion — “from a marketing standpoint, it does make a bigger impact” — but needs more than the five Maine companies involved in this year’s show.
Langston wouldn’t hesitate to get Shucks Maine Lobster involved in a Maine pavilion. “I think it’s absolutely crazy that Maine doesn’t have one,” Langston says. “Maine lobster is the strongest food brand there is, but Maine itself has a brand and so does Maine seafood. So it’s silly ... There was a Florida booth … there’s like 20 companies represented in a 20-foot by 60-foot booth. It lends credibility to all those different players.”
Langston speculates there also might be an aversion to setting up next to a perceived competitor, but he is a subscriber to the rising-tide-lifts-all-boats axiom. “We’re the up-start company in the lobster processing world,” he says. “Our mission is to get more people to eat lobster, not steal customers from our competitors.”
Marceau also wouldn’t have a problem setting up shop next to a competitor. In the small world of Maine lobster companies, competitors are also friends, Marceau says.
At the end of the day, people congregate around The Lobster Co.’s booth, including Boyd Dodge, an employee of Greenhead Lobster in Stonington. Bottles of Heineken are cracked. “Boyd is my friend, and my competition,” Marceau says, emphasizing his earlier point. He says the trade show is also a time to spend with friends. “It’s the camaraderie of it — and you only get to do it once a year.”
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