In an announcement made yesterday on their corporate website, UK-based Chester Group—which, in recent years, has sponsored consumer-audio shows in Vancouver, Brooklyn, and Brighton, UK, among other locales—revealed that they are "deferring" this year's Salon Son et Image, which had been scheduled to take place March 18 through 20 at the Bonaventure Hotel in Montreal.
In the post, Chester Group Marketing and Creative Director Scott Humphrey points to "a substantial drop in companies interested in exhibiting at this ongoing event." In a reference to SSI's founders, from whom Chester Group purchased the show in 2013, Humphrey continued, "We know that the previous organizers also did all they could to keep the Show going but the decline in exhibitor support had been gradual but erosive."
As to a possible make-up date, Chester Group Managing Director Roy Bird expressed hope that fans of SSI will not have to wait until 2017. Speaking from his office in Cheshire, UK, Bird said, "I think at the moment we should like very much to maintain a show in 2016. A show organizer does not like to miss a year: if you miss a year, it becomes difficult to carry on." Pressed for a more precise prediction, Bird suggested that having a "make-up" show in Montreal follow on the heels of another audio event in the same general region would be ideal: "The trade likes to keep shows close together, to save exhibitors having to take things in and out of warehouses, in and out of storage. If possible, we would like to keep shows in or around one another."
"Despite the doom and gloom," Bird continued, "Vancouver is still doing very well, and we'll soon have some very good news about the New York area show," the latter a reference to Chester Group's traditional mid-autumn show. "We've now had a response from virtually every single [Salon Son et Image] exhibitor, and all have been receptive, cooperative, and very friendly about it, and they all hope that the show will go on."
According to the announcement on the Chester Group's website, refunds for current SSI ticket holders are in the works, and the company hopes to complete those arrangements within the next few days.
Stop Press: Michel Plante, who, with his wife Sarah Tremblay, used to own SSI, posted the following comment on Facebook this morning: "Today at 5 in the morning we can announce that a non-profit organization was formed and that the SSI 2.0 will take place as planned."
Within hours of learning the above, we received additional news, this time from the former owners of Salon Son et Image, Michel Plante and Sarah Tremblay: in cooperation with "a group of industry members," they have made arrangements for an audio show—called Montreal Salon Audio—to take place as originally intended, from March 18 through 20 at the Bonaventure Hotel. According to Plante and Tremblay, soon after this 2016 show, "a board of directors will be elected in order to plan the future of this iconic event." Their motivation: "We just could not accept that this magical event would disappear."
As an added incentive, and owing to what the sponsors acknowledge will be "a limited number of exhibitors," admission will be free to the public, and the rate for exhibitors has been "drastically reduced."
One wonders: will there now be two shows per year in Montreal? Only time will tell—but there can be no doubt that hundreds of faithful SSI attendees will be happy not to miss this well-loved spring event at the Bonaventure.
