SHOT Show is a massive trade show. Last year’s was the largest SHOT Show ever with more than 2,600 companies displaying products and services in booths covering more than 821,000 net square feet and attracting over 55,400 industry professionals from 117 countries and all 50 states.

The show extends throughout the Venetian Expo and into the Caesars Forum. You cannot turn a corner on the show floor without discovering more booths you didn’t know existed, or getting turned around and lost. Travel the show floor without using the SHOT Show app at your own peril.

NSSF’s SHOT University is the industry’s continuing ed program for retailers, and probably a good idea for smaller companies with direct-to-consumer components. Photo: P. Erhardt

Over the years the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has added more and more value for both exhibitors and attendees with things like SHOT University, its retailer business education seminars, the Archery Pavilion, for, well, archery manufacturers, and the SHOT Show After Dark networking events…for, you know, networking.

Of the many added benefits that NSSF now offers at SHOT Show, nothing may be more valuable to the overall industry than the Supplier Showcase, or what Jim Shepherd referred to in his Outdoor Wire feature as the Show In A Show.

The 2024 SHOT Show was the first time I visited the Supplier Showcase. I wasn’t planning on it until NSSF’s Bill Dunn told me there were now over 560 exhibitors participating upstairs in the Palazzo Ballroom on the 5th floor of the Venetian Expo.

It didn’t take long for the aisles of the Palazzo Ballroom to fill up, proving that the Supplier Showcase is indeed the show in a show. Photo: P. Erhardt

I do not have a manufacturing background, beyond what I have learned through osmosis working at and touring various companies. I am a marketing/PR, and now media, guy. Despite what some of my friends think, I do not know everybody in or everything about the industry. But I do know what I don’t know, so walking the Supplier Showcase and talking to exhibitors really brought home the the value of this aspect of SHOT Show.

And what I do know, is that with a couple bucks in one’s bank account (more than a couple, obviously) you could walk into the Supplier Showcase, cruise up and down all the aisles, and come out the other side ready to launch a new gun at the next SHOT Show.

While the main show floor of SHOT has all the bright shiny objects of giants booths, new products and major marketing pushes, the Supplier Showcase is where the purchasing agents and design/product engineers ‘shop.’

I am one of those people that enjoys SHOT Show and wants to spend all four days traveling the miles of aisles, but there are several attendees that come in just for a day or two to attend key meetings. These are frequently with their current or future suppliers.

These meetings have a major impact on new product development and incorporation of new manufacturing technologies in those new products. This past January an industry friend of mine casually mentioned a meeting he had with a supplier where he’d be asking them to work with a material they hadn’t previously worked with. When I questioned why they would do that, he told me he’d done this previously and it resulted in a new area of significant business for that supplier.

In other words, these high level meetings can work both ways when it comes to delivering business value.

The large manufacturers, the Rugers, Sigs and Mossbergs of the industry, are already dialed into the supplier market, but they still have staff always looking for what’s new in manufacturing, materials and processes.

For smaller manufacturers the Supplier Showcase offers solutions to their production problems by outsourcing manufacturing of key components to those companies with the needed expertise. Photo: P. Erhardt

For the smaller manufacturers, the Supplier Showcase is almost a requirement. With limited capital to invest in their in-house capabilities, or worse, a limited technical knowledge to solve their manufacturing problems, small firearm and accessory makers need to find their way to the Supplier Showcase for what could turn into their own “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” moment.

And exhibiting suppliers need to welcome these smaller companies because with the expertise available on the floor of the Supplier Showcase, those small companies can grow into mid-sized or even mid-major companies, complete with their own massive booth on the main show floor.

If you are a supplier whose goods and services can benefit firearm, ammunition and accessories manufacturers, and you have yet to exhibit at NSSF’s Supplier Showcase at SHOT Show, then there is no time like the present to fill out the 2025 Supplier Showcase Application & License for New Suppliers.

You may also want to make your travel plans to be in Las Vegas for Monday and Tuesday, January 20 and 21. I know I plan to be there Monday, even though I don’t make anything…except for typos.

– Paul Erhardt, Managing Editor, the Outdoor Wire Digital Network