2025 Conference News

A Long Tradition of Annual Conferences

As everyone knows, with the exception of the Covid years, RI has sponsored an ‘RI Conference’ each year since it began back at the turn of the century – that is almost 25 years of conferences! We have traveled to many locations including Charlotte, Cincinnati, Chicago, San Diego, Wichita, Kansas City, Dallas, San Antonio, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and several times in Tampa and Orlando. We even did one conference on a Caribbean Cruise!

Along with visiting these cities, we have visited the homes of many of our key vendors, such as Sharpline, Solar Gard, Grimco, Restylers Choice, Keystone, and Katzkin.

For those that have attended year after year, these conferences have been wonderful events where we get to see and hear about the latest products and trends in the industry. And of course, the thing that draws so many of us is the opportunity to visit with friends in the industry that we have known for decades.

Conference Realities

But as with all things business related, to be considered successful, they must make sense financially. RI, its vendors, and those members that attend, collectively spend tens of thousands of dollars to participate in each conference. While we love getting together and seeing old friends, the conferences simply are no longer generating sufficient growth in sales to offset the cost for RI or its vendors. This is why you may have noticed over the last few years a decline in the number of vendors participating.

For these reasons, we have decided that we will not have an ‘RI Conference’ in 2025. Does this mean we will never have another conference? No. Our thinking, as well as that of our key vendors, is that a conference ‘every other year’ would make more sense than an annual event. So at this time, we do plan to have a conference in 2026.

2025 Plans

What about 2025? Will we do anything? Yes. We are in the beginning stages of planning some ‘training conferences’. These would be with only 1 vendor at a time, and would be 1 or 2 days in length. They would be for a limited number of attendees, and would focus on training new installers in a specific product line. It is our hope that these ‘training conferences’ would help to generate ‘new business’ by training installers on the products of our key vendors. We will release details as these become available.

What else is planned for 2025? We will likely be at the SEMA show in November 2025 as normal. And perhaps at the ‘Graphics Pro Wrap Con’ in Long Beach in August of 2025.

2026 Plans

As noted above, at this time we do plan to have a traditional conference in 2026. Of course, this will depend on many factors. We will keep everyone posted as things develop over the next year.

Thank You to All!

It has been said that ‘the only constant in life is change’. While we certainly wish we could afford to continue to have an annual conference and see our loyal members and good friends, the realities of business dictate that we make a change. We look forward to seeing everyone in 2026, or at one our other events in 2025!

And as always, thanks for your support of Restylers International and your lasting friendship.