Joe Nowlan, MassDevice staff

The 2009 BioMEDevice conference might be in Boston, but its exhibitors hail from around the country. Wherever they’re from, though, they’re all looking to accomplish the same thing: Build new business.

“This is our first year on the East Coast, so we’re getting the word out,” says Craig Morris, silicon products business unit manager for Minneapolis-based ProMed Molded Products Inc.

Morris tells MassDevice that the 20-year-old medical silicone molding company relies partly on trade shows to develop new business. A down economy, he says, helps sort the wheat from the chaff.

“We’re getting fewer ‘lookers’ [at our BioMEDevice booth], but the people who are looking at us are very serious,” Morris explains.

That’s been Larry Knight’s experience too. The president of Lighthouse Technical Sales, a Nashua, N.H.-based manufacturer’s rep that sells interconnects, semi-conductor boards and power source products, tells us he’s getting fewer leads from the show this year, but the leads he is getting are hot.

“The trade show business is not bad. Traffic’s about the same [as last year],” Knight says.

“We go to a lot of these shows and are also active in different [associations],” adds Craig Chasteen, a salesman at NuTEC Metal Joining, a Prince & Izant Co. subsidiary based in Cleveland that specializes in brazing and soldering products. “For us, medical is up, as is aerospace. But automotive and HVAC are down.”

Patrick Hearn, senior biomaterials engineer at Kensey Nash, a medical device maker based in Exton, Pa., says his firm uses conferences like this to increase visibility.

“We like shows like this because we’re a niche company and want to meet the one or two people who’d be our best customers,” Hearn explains. “Our business has been stable and we’ve been able to ride out the storm. As long as the aging population tries to do too much, we’ll be in good shape.”