New NICA Ideas

 

The NICA Trade Show was August 10 - 11, 2009 in Las Vegas, NV.  It was a great event once again with business owners and carvers sharing there ideas and concepts on making there business and the industry better.  


Some of the booths and vendors present at this tradeshow were:

  1. •Ice Crafters featuring an assortment of ice carving tools

  2. •Ice Sculpting Tools featuring an assortment of ice carving tools

  3. •Clinebell Equipment Company featuring clear ice block makers

  4. •I-Sculpt Featuring CNC machine and a Trim Saw

  5. •Ice Decors featuring Martini Chandelier

Thanks for supporting the NICA cause!


Many different ideas were gathered at this event to help the organization move forward.  One of the best ideas was to start advertising on a national scale to promote our Find-A-Sculptor section on the web site.  This section which has already proven to be the best reason to become a business member and provides a great link opportunity for your personal web sites.  Even if you do not think you are getting business from this link, then look at it another way.  The spiders are what search engines use to crawl through web sites when they are searching for key words.  It is very important for your web site to have multiple links to reputable sites like NICA’s in order to enhance your search engine optimization. 

This idea was presented to us by Aaron Costic.


Another way of advertising for the business member is to push the Find-A-Sculptor page to national conventions like the ACF, Event Planners, and catering organizations.  We want the people in the food service industry to think about ICE for decorations first.  Forget the flowers, people remember the ice sculptures not the bridal bouquet!


One other major idea was presented numerous times from a couple different people.  This time at the trade show Ryan McDougall of Ice Occasions Las Vegas made a plea to all attendees to share some business information with NICA so we can begin creating financial statements for the Ice Carving Industry as a whole.  We will be setting up a way for you to share some of your financials with out giving your company name or any personal information.  The key to this is so NICA can begin to gather necessary information that will later down the road help you.  I know that as of now you may not see the benefits to this, but I promise this will be a key factor in helping out our industry as a whole.


If anyone has any comments or new ideas we can implement (with your help) please contact us immediately and lets get the ball rolling....


September 2009