Couple Make Consumer Shows Their Careers

A weekend hobby has turned into lucrative careers for a Camarillo couple who bill themselves as masters of the consumer show.

Frank and Beth Perez, owners of Advertising Concepts Productions in Moorpark, specialize in producing large-scale computer extravaganzas, such as the Computer and Electronics Expo ’95 on Saturday and Sunday at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The Perezes have put on more than 60 shows ranging from computers and fishing to recreational vehicles and senior citizens in the 10 years since walking away from advertising careers in television, radio and vocational schools. After 15 years in sales and management at different companies, they quit the same week in 1985.

“We didn’t exactly know what we were doing, but we’re glad we did it,” said Frank Perez, 48.

The first show the husband-and-wife team put together was a fishing show. They learned from trial and error from that first fishing show--including scheduling gaffes that placed an exhibitor at two places at one time. But the Perezes say that all customers signed up for the next fishing show because of the couple’s hard work.

For this weekend’s computer show, the couple coordinate schedules and seminars for various computer exhibitors, and pay up-front costs for the $9,000-a-day convention center rent, advertising, decorators, security, parking and insurance. In all, the overhead costs are $100,000 for each of the L. A. Civic Center expos that are paid by the Perezes, while the $6.50 admission fees they charge generate the couple’s hoped-for profits, Beth Perez said.

She said she expects a crowd of at least 10,000 people a day to see the 200 computer exhibitors occupying 500 booths. The Perezes said they could make $30,000 for the two-day show if 10,000 people a day attend.

The Perezes have cut back on the number of computer expos they stage. For the past two years, they set up less-elaborate monthly shows at Cal State Northridge, but this year have confined themselves to a three-times-a-year production at the L. A. Civic Center.