CHICAGO — Two industry veterans have teamed up to launch the Milwaukee Mineral, Fossil, Crystal, Gem & Jewelry Show, taking place Aug. 13-17, 2025, at the Baird Center.
The new venture was launched by Lowell Carhart, who also launched the Denver Mineral, Fossil, Gem & Jewelry Show, Honolulu Mineral, Fossil, Gem & Jewelry Show, 22nd Street Mineral, Fossil, Gem & Jewelry Show in Tucson, and the NJ Mineral, Fossil, Gem & Jewelry Show in New Jersey. Carhart was impressed with the recently completed Baird Center expansion and saw an opportunity in the Midwest to launch a new event serving the Madison-Milwaukee-Chicago market.
Carhart then brought in Donald Olstinske as the Vice President of Sales and Operations for the Milwaukee venture, giving them a combined 60 years of experience in the trade show industry. Olstinske’s trade show industry experience includes serving as a Sales and Show Manager at TransWorld Exhibits for more than 20 years.
The show has attracted more than 250 exhibitors for its inaugural edition and is propelled by the show’s focus on transparency and keeping prices low. With its central location and strong momentum, the show’s organizers say that the event will double in size in 2026 and be three times larger in 2027.
A Strategic Location and Venue
In the Milwaukee-Madison-Chicago area, Lowell found that the mineral, fossil and gem show scene was comprised of only small “club shows” hosted by local hobby societies and organizations. Attendance was low and the number of vendors rarely exceeded 50.
“The primary reason for this dearth of large shows is because the biggest venues in the likeliest location — Chicago — are all ‘Union houses.’ Such venues drive up the cost of show production so high that the booth fee must be high to cover the expense, which is too excessive for most vendors to make a profit,” Olstinske said. “When Lowell stumbled on the new, huge, non-Union Baird Conference Center in Milwaukee, he instantly recognized the opportunity. With the ability to set up the booths with his own crew, using his own equipment, he was able to slash the booth fee by 50% and attract a large number of vendors.”
Committing to Transparency
Part of the appeal of the Milwaukee Show is the lower barrier of entry than other trade shows. The organizers highlight costs like negotiated room rates (including tax), ticket pricing and booth rates right on the show’s website, available for anyone to see.
The show also shares its advertising budget for vendors to see how their fees are being used by the show’s team.
“Many vendors in the industry feel squeezed by ‘greedy’ show promoters who accept their booth fee and then do little to attract customers to the show. Lowell is a former vendor and knew this perception to be largely true,” Olstinske said. “So, by taking the innovative step to inform vendors that their entire booth fee will be spent on advertising — and showing them exactly how — this dissipates that tension and creates a genuine partnership. They now see that we are just as motivated to ensure a high attendance, because ticket fees pay all other show costs as well as our own profit, which is just as much at risk as theirs.”
Marketing Investments
For 2025, the advertising budget is $220,000, with a big chunk of that money being spent on a robust billboard campaign throughout the metro areas of Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago.
While digital advertising is all the rage for many businesses, a major benefit of the billboard campaign is that it targets drivers, which make up nearly the entirety of this show’s attendee cohort.
“To reach a digital audience, each audience member must already be tagged as a probable attendee. However, selection algorithms miss the majority of our potential attendees who are likely to be interested in minerals and fossils, and gems and jewelry, but whose online activity does not reveal this interest and/or engage little with social media,” Olstinske said. “In fact, surveys conducted at our NJ Show revealed that despite an aggressive digital campaign, over 80% of our attendees learned about that show from our billboards, compared to just 4% from digital marketing. The ‘word of mouth’ [marketing] was 12%, which increases every year. The cost-benefit analysis revealed that every dollar taken from billboards and spent instead on digital marketing resulted in a lower attendance.”
Along with the billboard campaign the show is executing targeted email blasts to the public and retailers within 100 miles of the event — an example of geofencing in marketing. The show is also advertising with industry publications that are displayed at other events across the U.S.
“We invest in collector club outreach via personal emails and invitations for them to set up a free recruiting table at our show. That grows their membership and supports long-term growth of our industry,” Olstinske said. “We also distribute colorful rack cards to our exhibitors to display in their booths at other shows, and we personally visit nearly every vendor at Tucson and Denver.”
Mixing Consumers with Trade Participants
In an effort to help maximize exhibitors ROI for participating, the show is open to consumers as well as other businesses.
“Not only will we be open to the public, but we also reach out to the retailers, collectors, traders, resellers, artists, jewelry makers, designers and organizations that benefit from shows like ours,” Olstinske said. “We want to be a true one stop shop for the entire market and thus give our vendors the opportunity to make the maximum amount of profit at each show.”
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