Almost every trade show publishes its exhibitor list on its own website, free, usually as a searchable directory with hall and stand numbers on it. You do not need to buy one. What costs you is the two problems that come after: telling whether the copy you took is complete, and finding out what two hundred company names actually sell.
Where the exhibitor list is published
Four places, in the order worth trying them.
- 1The fair's own exhibitor directory. Nearly always at a path like /exhibitors or /exhibitor-list, linked from the main navigation, and usually filterable by hall, country or product category. This is the authoritative copy and it is updated until the doors open.
- 2The floor plan. An interactive plan is a directory with coordinates attached, and on some fairs it carries stands the list has not caught up with yet. It is also the one document that tells you where a company physically is.
- 3The event app, once you have registered. Same data, sometimes fresher, occasionally with a contact per stand that the website does not carry.
- 4The organiser's press pack. Often carries the stated exhibitor count, which is the number you check every other copy against.
The three ways a copy of the list is incomplete
This is the part nobody checks, and it is the part that decides whether the rest of the work was worth doing. A partial exhibitor list does not announce itself. It looks exactly like a small fair.
- The portal paginates and the copy stops at page one
- The commonest failure by a distance. A directory answers eighteen booths, the copy stops, and the fair is recorded as an eighteen-stand event when the organiser's own press page says two thousand two hundred. Nothing about the eighteen rows looks wrong. Check the count you hold against the count the fair states.
- The list is alphabetical and the copy stops mid-alphabet
- A single long page filtered in the browser has no page two to miss and no total to check against, so a copy that stopped in the H's looks finished. The only test is whether you reached the last entry, which means looking at the end of the list rather than at the length of what you took.
- The directory is rendered in the browser and the copy is empty
- An interactive floor plan often has no exhibitor names in the page source at all. A tool that reads HTML gets a shell, reports what it found, and reports it in the same tone it would use for a real answer.
All three produce a file that is internally consistent, plausible, and wrong about the size of the fair. If you take one thing from this page, take the habit of checking the count you hold against the count the organiser states.
What the list is worth before you enrich it
Not much, and this is worth saying plainly because the list is the thing everybody asks for. Two hundred company names, a hall and a stand number tells you where everybody is and nothing about which of them is a customer. A seller with three days and forty walkable stands is being asked to pick forty from two hundred on the basis of company names alone, which mostly means picking the ones they have heard of.
The work that makes the list useful is finding out what each company sells, in its own words, and then judging that against who you sell to. That is the job, and it is roughly two minutes a company by hand.
| By hand | A scraper | Pengo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Getting the names | An afternoon of copy and paste | Minutes, once the selectors are written | One press |
| Knowing the list is complete | Check the count against the organiser's stated total | Whatever the selectors happened to catch | Five signals have to agree before it is stamped complete |
| What each company sells | About two minutes a company, so six or seven hours | Not covered. A scraper returns the directory, not the companies | A profile for every company, from the company's own pages |
| Which stands are worth your morning | Your own judgment, applied two hundred times | Your own judgment, applied two hundred times | A score and the sentence it was decided on, per stand |
| When the fair reruns next year | Do it again | Rewrite the selectors when the portal changes | Already on file, at the same price the first buyer paid |
How Pengo reads a directory to its end
Five signals, and a fair is only stamped complete when they agree. The pass reports the pages it saw and did not read, so a continuation starts at page two rather than page one. It carries the names already held as an exclusion list, so a portal repeating itself adds nothing and the chain stops. It checks what it returned against the fair's own stated exhibitor count. It has to state that it reached the last entry, and silence there is read as unfinished rather than as finished. And a pass that stopped short leaves a mark that an hourly sweep picks up and continues, free.
The last of those is the one worth spelling out, because it is where a paid list usually ends. A directory chain can stop short for four different reasons and none of them leaves anything on screen that says so. So the fair is marked as owing work, and the sweep finishes it without asking and without charging. A fair you have paid for is read to its end whether or not you notice it stopped.
The price is decided by the size of the fair and quoted before you press. If it turns out bigger than we priced it, we read it all anyway. If it turns out smaller, the difference comes back into the balance that does not expire.
Turning the list into a walk route
Once the list is complete and every company on it has been read, the remaining work is ordering. Pengo scores each stand against a description of who you sell to and shows the sentence it judged on, so a score you disagree with can be overruled in about four seconds rather than trusted. The list groups by hall in walk order for the floor, and sorts by column for the week before.
How well that scoring works is almost entirely decided by what you wrote in that description. There is a page on writing one: how to write an ICP description that scores well.
For the people standing on those stands, and why an attendee list is a different and much worse thing to buy, see how to get a trade show attendee list.
Questions
How do I get the exhibitor list for a trade show?
It is published on the fair's own website, free, almost every time. Look for an exhibitor directory in the main navigation, usually filterable by hall or product category, and an interactive floor plan beside it. The event app carries the same data once you have registered.
Are trade show exhibitor lists free?
The organiser's own directory is free to read, because the fair is selling stands and wants visitors to find them. Vendors who charge for an exhibitor list are usually selling a copy of that public directory, sometimes from a previous edition. Check the count against the fair's stated total before paying for one.
How do I know whether the exhibitor list I have is complete?
Compare the number of rows you hold with the exhibitor count the organiser states in its press pack or on the directory page itself. Most incomplete copies come from a paginated portal that answered page one, and a partial list looks exactly like a small fair.
Can I scrape a trade show exhibitor directory?
Technically it is usually possible, and two things limit it. Many directories render in the browser, so the names are not in the page source at all. And a scraper returns the directory rather than the companies, so you still have two hundred names and nothing about what any of them sells. Read the fair's terms first.
What do I do with an exhibitor list once I have it?
Find out what each company sells in its own words, judge that against who you sell to, and order the survivors by hall so the route walks itself. That is about two minutes a company by hand, so roughly seven hours for a 200-stand fair.
What does it cost to have Pengo read an exhibitor list?
The fair is priced by its size and quoted before you press. A 200-stand fair read in full, meaning the exhibitor list, a profile for every company on it and a score on every stand, is 2,750 credits, about $11. Plans start at $39 a month, and one fair a month is free.
Does the price change if somebody has already researched the fair?
No. The exhibitor list and the company profiles are shared facts, so a fair already on file is on screen the moment you press instead of taking fifteen minutes. The price is the same either way, because a bill that depended on whether a stranger wanted the same fair last week is not a price.