That 43k figure is shared with the adjacent poster art expo called Flatstock, but SXSW staff told me privately that their number for the Gear Expo was  23,775 – as counted by their door staff.

I still find that number not realistic, it probably includes a lot of people who dropped in without knowing what it was all about. Even if it’s impossible to get a precise number – I would say that throughout the 3 days we had somewhere between 2.5k  and 3.5k guitarists actively trying out pedals, and maybe another 2k just walking by to take a look.

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What I find interesting about the SXSW audience is that you get a lot of young musicians who are good enough to be called to play SXSW (pretty much every single emerging band wants to play SXSW, so these are the guys who were selected to play, no matter if they are there for an official or unofficial show). Also, they are exactly at the creative peak of their career, and they are very social, so if they find a pedal that excites them they are likely to spread the word about it.

On top of this, I personally did my best to promote the show to the local Austin musicians through geo-targeted ads in Google and Facebook. Austin has a rich community of musicians, mostly split between old timers into roots music and classic rock, and young college students interested in a more contemporary and experimental sound.

So overall it’s an audience interested in all kind of pedals, from the most classic to the most expreimental sounding ones.

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In my opinion the potential for the future for this show is really incredible.

I spent a lot of time outside the convention center attending shows or helping my distribution staff put the magazines around, and – notwithstanding the great traffic we had – most guitarists I met weren’t aware of the Stompbox Exhibit.

This is due to the fact that it’s very hard to promote anything that happens in Austin during SXSW, because there are hundreds of events happening at the same time, and also because it’s hard to surgically hit with promotions exactly the guitarists who are going to go to Austin that week.

But the bottom line is that the more we keep at this and the more established the SXSW Stompbox Exhibit will become, the more traffic and interest it will generate, and promoting it will become easier.

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PROMOTION AND PRESS COVERAGE

This was a little bit the more disappointing side of things. Because of Guitar World involvement the show wasn’t covered or promoted by other guitar publications like Premier Guitars and Vintage Guitars, although it needs to be considered that these publications don’t normally send staff to SXSW.

I think we all (The Deli, SXSW and Guitar World) did a great job in promoting the show, but we’ll seriously have to discuss how to improve press coverage for next year.

I hope you found this information useful. Please do not hesitate to send me any questions if you have them.

Paolo De Gregorio