Show And Tell

At most invention shows, you set up a booth and hope a manufacturer will stop by and visit. The Response Expo works just the opposite. Companies looking for inventions set up booths, and wait for you to come to them. The show features a wide variety of companies in the direct-response-TV industry, including companies that run one- to two-minute TV ads for products, as well as companies running infomercials on cable and local TV networks.

The lifeblood of these companies is new products, and if you have the right idea, some of them will even help finance its production. These companies only take on a very small percentage of the products they see, but the show might be just the place for you to visit if you have a product that will demonstrate well on TV and will appeal to most people. The show runs March 20 to 22 at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. (There's no need to register.) For more information on the Response Expo, contact Lara Giddings at (949) 760-0362.

This article was originally published in the March 2000 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Show And Tell.