Party Pavilion Laser Maze and Face Dancers Win Franchise Award

This year, the International Franchise Show opened with a wider and greater array of innovative businesses which were developed with a combination of out-of-the-box thinking and technological prowess. With over 200 businesses being previewed in 26 different cities, the winner of this year's Best Franchise award was quite obvious judging by all the hoopla coming from the winner's exhibit location.

​The International Franchise Show presented its awards to various "show stoppers." The award for Best in Show went to the company who without a doubt had the most buzz (and other sounds) coming from its exhibit.

At any given time there were probably about 1,500 - 2,000 people on the exhibition floor at all times, but it seemed like the large majority were camped in front of this year's winner, the Party Pavilion.  The Party Pavilion was a combined exhibit featuring a Portable Laser Maze and a music video green screen recording system called the Face Dancers.  Both systems were geared towards entrepreneurs wanting to get into the very lucrative and in-demand event entertainment industry. 

Billed as a green screen video entertainment company, the Face Dancers is a truly innovative, absolutely hysterical, and most definitely viral system which is popular at parties, events and entertainment centers. Participants are able to choose from any song ever made, and become the star of the video by placing their head on a dancing body.  Absolutely the most popular attraction in the entire convention center!

The other half of the Party Pavilion featured their new portable laser maze.  Every hour, the company demonstrated how quickly and easily their Portable Laser Maze could be set-up and in operation.  After the 20 minute demonstration, participants were able to crawl through the maze!  Another very popular exhibit by Agex Technologies, and good reason to win the Best in Show award.

With nearly 10,000 attendees during the two day show, it seemed that most of them must have stopped by and either made a video or crawled through the laser maze. It was quite hilarious to watch grown adults make total fools of themselves while making a video of themselves, and even more amusing to see just how many of these business people were waiting in line to speak to a company representative about purchasing one of their systems.

This year's show hosted more than 100 first time exhibitors spurred by the desire to expand throughout the U.S. . Many veteran IFE franchisors claimed they saw more foot traffic by noon on the first day than they did over the course of the entire weekend during last year's event.

Of course, there were the usual suspects, Little Caesars, Dairy Queen, Roto-Rooter, UPS store, Minuteman Press, Game Stop and many other of the A listers along with some new copycats, Freshslice Pizza, CoolTreats, Valu-Rooter and the Game Dudes. Probably about 85% of the show was redundant as the Franchise industry seemed to have run out of new ideas and always repeats what is hot.

Media interest in the show was at an all-time high too, as word about the show's significance spread in the weeks and days leading up to the show.

Expo Management, the show's producers, ramped up their marketing efforts with street teams, billboards, street banners and media buys with publications like Money, TIME and Fortune to increase awareness of the new and improved show.