The Showtacular shows an entire industry how it *should* be done.

It’s a little hard to remember exactly how we felt now a couple of weeks back at the dual show — the Empire Alpaca Extravaganza & NEAOBA Fall Alpaca Show — that was correctly billed as the Showtacular, held over the course of 3 days in Syracuse, NY. That would to a great degree be due to the very real haze caused by 10 days of cold and cough (maybe fever?) that has now hopefully finished making it’s way through our household, and specifically the adult humans here in the Lutz family. Call it the final gift from Syracuse, if you will. Everything has a cost. I get it, ok? In any case, that would be the reason for the relatively tardy howling at the moon that will follow in a soon to be produced results-oriented post. That and the small matter of the herd health days this past Thursday/Friday, which this month included pedicures, for the 250+ critters on the farm. Excuses, excuses…blah, blah, blah.

So how about that idea of 2 shows in one venue over the course of 72 hours? From our perspective, it was a smashing success! Though you could make a legitimate argument that only the brain-dead would elect to bring 25 animals to an event where the 2 shows were going to be overlapping and running simultaneously in 4 rings at once on the middle day (Saturday), that was a level of chaos which we fully brought onto ourselves. We were grateful that our friends Sue Monat and Vinny Veratti — to say nothing of the usual cast of victims who are always just too sweet to run the other way whenever they see us coming at them with a number placard and a pleading look in our eyes — were there to help save our bacon on that one crazy day. We sometimes had animals in all 4 rings simultaneously, while others waited on deck. As I said though, more on that stuff later.

For that whole story, as great as it was, was in my opinion a secondary one to the economics of the shows themselves. The doubling-up of these two events into a single venue meant that the NEAOBA show, for example, whose last iteration in 2014 as the Green Mountain Alpaca Fall Spectacular had by all accounts run deeply in the red, more than doubled its number of entries this year, all while paying maybe 25% of what they had paid in rent last year in Essex Junction. The new NEAOBA and Empire shows also both presumably made money this time around by together attracting exhibitor numbers which neither could have ever hoped to bring in on their own. As someone that has been actively showing animals for 16 years, I really can’t begin to tell you how remarkable that is. As I was saying to anyone that would listen that weekend: the dual show concept just might be the single most innovative thing that the US alpaca industry has ever done. More animals for the shows = more revenue for the organizers (the New England Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association and the Empire Alpaca Association) and for the national umbrella organization, the Alpaca Owners Association (AOA), which allows all three organizations to better carry out their missions and serve their members. Oh, and with more exhibitors, came better competition, better bang for the buck, and far more exposure for those of us lucky enough to win something over the course of the weekend! Radical indeed. The only question is why didn’t someone try this model, some version of which has been around the dog and cat worlds for ages, a long time ago? Better late than never, to be sure though.

Genuine kudos to the folks at AOA for having the smarts to approve this model for the two shows. Though I fully realize that I’m tossing a rather heretical poo-grenade here, I will also point out though that if AOA isn’t careful in the future about making the rules for such dual events too onerous, they could well find future shows forgoing the association’s certification altogether, something which already carries a lot less cachet than it did once upon a time. Along with having an AOA-mandated curtain visually dividing the two shows in Syracuse, allegedly to keep the four professional judges from seeing one another’s placements from one show to the other, the word on the street was that the judges from the separate shows weren’t even supposed to have lunch together. I mean, really? What about trusting the integrity of the judges as human beings and decent people? In the unfortunate case of judges that do a poor job, or heaven forbid do something dodgy, those folks would quickly find themselves underemployed. For an industry undeniably dominated by proponents of the free market system, we often seem hesitant to trust in that model. Please be smart and don’t kill our newly-hatched golden goose. That’s a whole lot of money were talking about just to have a certain logo on any given show’s ribbons. At a time when our national breed association/registry, needs every little bit of revenue it can muster and financial sustainability for all involved is of the utmost importance, hopefully common sense will prevail.

Finally, it is almost impossible to overstate the energy and enthusiasm that the Showtacular fostered among the exhibitors of the two shows: alpaca breeders large and, most importantly, small alike. That has real marketing value that in many ways can never be quantified. It’s a positive mojo that can potentially build on itself. The simple fact that the Judges’ Choice awards in the Extravaganza halter show (neither of which we won, by the way) along with the oral reasons for the Empire fleece show Championships and specialty awards (some of which we did) took place on Saturday night when most folks were still in attendance, created a shared and convivial atmosphere which can’t be faked. Let’s build on that. A very real tip of the hat to all of the Empire and NEAOBA board members and volunteers, all of whom worked their butts off to make the weekend happen. It genuinely felt like a show weekend we haven’t seen since the roaring, run and gun early 2000s and offers a reason for real optimism for the future. A show model that works, benefiting both its organizers and its exhibitors, arguably in equal measure. It’s not a cure-all for an admittedly challenging industry — one which we love and are committed to in spite of its many flaws — but it sure as heck is one gigantic step in the right direction. For our part, we already know that we will be back there at the 2016 Showtacular, a bastion of semi-chaos in a sea of show weekend awesomeness. Forward we go.

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