CHICAGO — Maritz announced it acquired Convention Data Services (CDS) from Freeman on July 1. The deal comes on the heels of the April announcement that CDS was selected as the strategic full-service registration and integration partner for Informa Markets’ North American event portfolio.
The acquisition of CDS, an event registration, business intelligence and lead management partner, will increase Maritz’ market share while combining decades worth of expertise in servicing association events and trade shows.
Trade Show Executive talked with David Peckinpaugh, President and CEO of Maritz, to find out more about the acquisition and what it means for customers.
Integrating CDS Into Maritz
Maritz has told clients that they won’t experience immediate changes as the integration process begins.
“CDS will be integrated into Maritz, and I want to make that clear because the number one focus for us is our clients,” Peckinpaugh said. “We’re not going to do anything that’s going to cause them stress or create any dissatisfaction, so we’re going to be patient. We have an optimization team and optimization process that we’re kicking off, and we have a very realistic timeframe. It’s not going to be one year, it’s probably a three-year window to really work through all that. While this is really exciting news, it’s going to take time and we’re going to make sure that we’re delivering to the marketplace, and most importantly to our clients, and taking great care of our people.”
From Friendly Competition to a Singular Force
In the Fastest 50 class of 2023, Maritz serviced 14 shows as the official registration contractor and 5 shows as the official housing contractor, while CDS serviced 22 shows as the official registration contractor. For the Gold 100 class of 2022, Maritz was the official registration contractor for 26 shows and the official housing contractor for 11 shows, and CDS was the official registration contractor for 23 shows.
“We’re very excited about the talent that comes along with CDS,” Peckinpaugh said. “We have highly respected CDS over the years as our primary competitor. I think there’s been that sort of friendly competition, and we’ve seen customers move between us, we’ve competed; and I think we’ve done that in a really effective way for both parties. And so, I’m really excited about the talent, we get 200-plus people, leaders, high performers, and they have a great customer base that has been very loyal to them for many years. There’s a reason and that’s because of their people.”
Solving Challenges with Innovation
In an era of changing exhibitor and attendee expectations, buying cycles and buying timelines, the combined expertise of Maritz and CDS will help give insights and reveal trends that will drive innovation in the marketplace, like new technology solutions.
“At the end of the day, a lot of our clients are really buying our people. Technology and all those things are enhancements, but it’s the teams they work with and the expertise that our teams have that really are the reasons we win and retain business,” Peckinpaugh said. “And we want to continue to bolster that, accelerate that and build on that to continue to drive the value proposition that we have.”
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Peckinpaugh shared that the company is kicking off an internal technology summit in St. Louis, with the leaders of Maritz and CDS doing a deep dive into everything technology related.
“Like I said, there is probably a three-year window here that we’re looking to complete the integration to build out new tools and solutions,” he said. “It’s way too early for me to give any insights or predictions of what that’s going to look like, but it’s going to be collaborative. It’s being driven by both sides of the equation: Maritz and CDS. We use the word optimization because that’s exactly how we look at it; it’s the best of both. One is not better than the other, but we want the best of what we’re bringing together, and that will be what’s driving our products and solutions in the future.”
Previously acquired by Freeman in 2019 to bolster its registration offerings, CDS’ registration data helps provide analytics and insights to help drive more success at events.
“Predictive analytics is a big part of who we are and what we do,” Peckinpaugh said. “Anytime you can add more data, or wealth and depth of data to that data set, it can only enhance what you can do for your clients. Our clients own the data, but we’re able to combine that data to aggregate it in a way that allows us then to do things like trends reports, which we do on a regular basis. Now we’re adding hundreds of shows to that aggregated data and it only allows it to be stronger, better and more accurate and more predictive.”
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
