Darrell Denny exits Emerald Expositions
At the helm for nearly a decade, he's stepping down as executive vice president.
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Darrell Denny is leaving his post as executive vice president of Emerald Expositions after the company underwent a restructuring.
“Who wouldn’t be grateful for having been able to serve the outdoor, snow, cycling and surf industries for a long time?” Denny told SNEWS. “I believe in the importance of recreating outside and how this leads to being a healthier and more ecologically sensitive person. I will be cheering for and eager to help my Emerald teammates including Marisa Nicholson and Roy Turner who are great leaders and fine friends.”
Denny led the sports and e-commerce trade shows, such as Outdoor Retailer and Interbike. In November, he announced the cancellation of the 2019 Interbike show and later announced the decision to bring bikes to Outdoor Retailer Winter Market.
Other trade show shake ups under his watch include the change to three Outdoor Retailer shows per year, each three days long.
His departure follows the trade show company’s report of a 30 percent decline in net income in its first quarter and lowered expectations for the year. The company also reported that total revenue for the two 2018-2019 winter shows was up more than 40 percent from the previous winter’s single show revenue.
Outdoor Retailer Show Director Marisa Nicholson confirmed the restructuring and said the sports and e-commerce trade show will now be overseen by Joe Randall, another executive vice president at Emerald.
“Darrell was obviously an incredible leader and he was truly an advocate for our team and the industry,” Nicholson said. “One of the things people loved so much about Darrell is that he brought both humor and intelligence to his job. That’s something that we and the industry will remember. We always talk about how he had all these funny, amazing different sayings. We’ve always called them Darrell-isms. When it came to the trade show, something he would say is, ‘The best we could hope for is to be perfectly imperfect.’
She continued, “As you can imagine, every aspect of our job—timing to location to how the floor plan is laid out—everybody’s is going to have an opinion. So he appropriately would use that phrasing. He had many more isms and you’ll find that everybody probably has a favorite.”
Denny’s last day is May 24.
