The price of attending a trade fair can add up, what with the cost of travel, registration, meals and lodging. Exhibiting at a fair is even more costly, running into tens of thousands of dollars. For smaller companies, it just might not be worth it to send staff to a show or man a booth.

But at the Distribution Virtual Tech Fair , where exhibitors and attendees interacted in an online trade convention, registration was free and the cost of exhibiting was a fraction of the price of a “live” booth.

The fair, hosted by the Brown Smith Wallace Consulting Group of St. Louis, Mo., was held Sept. 12 and 13 and featured 25 distribution software vendors and related resource providers. Event sponsors included INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION, IBM, ID Supplier Search, Modern Distribution Management and the American Supply Assn.

The fair's roughly 400 attendees browsed the booths online, chatting with vendors via instant message or email, and kicked back in the virtual lounge to network with other attendees.

“This is a major wave of the future,” said Steve Epner, founder and president of Brown Smith Wallace, who helped organize the event. “I've had people tell me that this was the best way to talk to [numerous] vendors. One guy actually put aside most of his day and talked to all of the software vendors he wanted to and really narrowed the field. It's saved him weeks of work.”

For Tim Milet, CIO of Shorr Packaging in Aurora, Ill., the virtual fair was an ideal way to shop for software for his family-owned business.

“We are looking at evaluating or replacing our ERP, CRM and WMS systems,” Milet said. “[The virtual fair] is a solid concept. I'm actually going to talk with some internal sales and marketing folks here to see if we can use it.”

Scott Pugmire of Sage Software , an exhibitor at the event, said his company's experience at the fair was positive, with more than 150 visitors logging into Sage's booth.

“A live trade show can cost anywhere from $18,000 to $26,000. This allows us to augment our [live] shows at literally a fraction of the cost. I've just been amazed at how many people have signed on,” Pugmire said. “This allows somebody to come online without having to travel and pay the costs of all that and come to one place and see Sage and all its competitors in one spot, just like a [live] trade show.”