TRADE SHOWS PART NINE - OUR RETAIL BOOTH

I handle all of our retail activities, and our retail booth gets used frequently. I participate in the Fremont Sunday Market (a weekly flea/entrepreneurial market in Seattle), a few street fairs, and occasional specialty events such as pet fundraisers. I got married a couple of years ago, and my loving husband got me a good, used Toyota pickup in lieu of a ring! I am the kind of woman who appreciates this kind of thing. He followed it up with a canopy for my birthday. I can haul everything I need, including stock, in my truck now.

As you can see, the the booth can be set up either indoors or out. I discussed signs in the previous posting. The table and chairs are mom's cardtable hand-me-downs. The shelving is plastic, two four-tier units, one for each side of the booth, and I put two-tiered sections end to end. Each four-tier unit cost $20 at Lowe's. This shelving goes together and comes apart easily. The signs for our "strip" products are hanging on gridwall, two pieces of 2x6' gridwall each side of the booth. I got the gridwall for about $8 per piece off of craigslist. It is also available at any fixture supply store. We also have hooks and shelves for the gridwall, which were surprisingly inexpensive. Be sure to check out craigslist for used supplies.

I like to think really cheap for this type of booth, and I love seeing what solutions others come up with. Think old folding tables, kiddie tables, stacks of cardboard boxes, and plastic bins covered in tablecloths or fabric remnants for display surfaces. Old suitcases or trunk look great as display pieces, and you can transport your stuff in them.

I mentioned briefly fire retardant materials. Be aware that for indoor shows, you will need fire reisistant display items in your booth. You can use fire retardant fabrics, or treat flammable display items with fire retardant spray (anything wood, bamboo, or straw, especially) The spray is about $20 per quart spray bottle or about $45 per gallon. You can get the spray at a costume and display store or a theatrical supply store. The paperwork you receive makes the fire thing sound ominous and fraught with danger, but we have yet to encounter a problem. Regardless, it is good to be aware of the regulations and follow them as closely as possible.

You will need a 10x10 canopy if you do outdoor events, If you spend money anywhere, spend it on the canopy and sidewalls, essential where rain showers or blazing sun are an issue. My favorite canopy company is KD Kanopy. John provides gold-plated customer service, and their products are quality through and through. They are also rather pricey. You can use a backyard canopy, even, if you have one. Once again, be sure to check out craigslist for used canopies. I own a pedestrian Quikshade and sidewalls. My canopy cost me about $140 new at a local sporting goods store and the sidewalls I bought online, $130 total for three.

You will need weights for your canopy (20 lbs per leg), which can be made of just about anything--buckets of sand, cylinders of sand or cement, barbell weights, anything else you can find that is cheap or free, and sufficient bungee cords to tie them to the legs or frame. You can also buy weights that are made for the canopy.

I don't think I have anything more to add at this point. Again, keep the comments coming!

TRADE SHOWS PART 8 – OUR BOOTH DESIGN

I want to remind you of the four elements from a previous blog:

1. The clutter factor.

2. The color factor.

3. The labor factor.

4. The cost factor.

I want to start by discussing what you get when you plunk your money down for a booth. We are participating in three buyer shows (nonpublic) this year, and all of them have different booth configurations. It’s maddening. If you sign up for a buyer’s show, pay close attention to the exhibitor manual to determine what the booth configuration requirements are.

By configuration, I mean kind of booth space is provided for you. For our three buyer shows this year, we are encountering three different configurations (a different one for each show!):

1. A spot on the floor. Nothing else. You provide everything else, including a solid back wall (no pipe/drape allowed). (Our Chicago show)

2. A booth with eight-foot pipe/drape walls on three sides. You don’t get to pick the color. (Our Seattle show)

3. A booth with an eight-foot pipe/drape back and three-foot pipe/drape sidewalls on each side. Again, you don’t get to pick the color. You will often have height restrictions for your display with this type of booth as well. (Our Vegas show)

Our booth is tiny—either a 10x10 space or a 10x15 space. Between our retail show booth and our buyer show booth, we have built in an enormous amount of flexibility that allows us to handle just about any configuration easily without spending more money. All told, I think we have spent about $500 on our retail booth (including the canopy and side panels for outdoor events) over the past couple of years and closer to $1000 for our buyer show booth.

Below is a picture of our buyer show booth setup in a space 10 feet wide by 15 feet deep. In this entry, I will discuss this booth setup in detail, including the supplies used and where we purchased them.

When we arrived at our first ever buyer show, the booth was 8-foot high muslin drape on all three sides. Great if you have a black sign and your merchandise pops against muslin. Our signs are white. They disappeared into the muslin. Luckily, this show was in Seattle and I happened to have 45 yards of 210D urethane-coated nylon at home, and it was the right color to make the signs pop. This stuff is quite cheap wholesale from Top Value Fabrics (about $2 per yard). We set up our booth, took measurements, then went home and for the next five hours, sewed up 9’8” by 8’ high royal blue panels to cover the muslin. We put grommets in the top to be able to hang them from the pipe, and they hung great!

Our next show, the International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago, provided nothing but a spot on the floor. We ordered a metal frame from the Flourish Company (the frame for mesh panels) that cost $369 including shipping. This frame sets up with two people, breaks down completely, can be shipped or hauled in the truck easily, and allows us a great deal of flexibility because we can drape it with whatever we want. The bottom bar is adjustable, so it pulls the fabric taut. Because we needed a channel in the fabric to put it on the frame, we folded over the top of the aforementioned blue panels, then put a channel in the bottom, and voila! We could cover the frame with the same blue panels. If necessary, we can take out this stitching to again use it to cover muslin sides. The fabric panels fold and ship easily.

This panel idea is considered pipe and drape, and we received a violation notice for such (they do not allow pipe and drape of any kind). We did not understand the whole pipe and drape thing yet. By the end of show, however, we were informed that we could use the same configuration next year. Go figure.

This blue fabric is not flame retardant, which could be an issue at some shows.

Now to the pedestals. We priced pedestals, and ouch! Not in our budget. So, we made them. We ordered 12”x12”x40” cardboard boxes for $2.09 apiece from ULine. We bought fire-retardant fabric for $3.45 per yard from the local costume/display supply store (Display & Costume Supply) and made covers for the boxes. The different heights are achieved by cutting off the boxes at different lengths. We then fold the fabric up inside the box and tape it. They look great, and people always want to buy the covers from us. To create a smooth top, we put 12”x12” polystyrene plastic squares on the tops of the boxes under the fabric. These are not necessary, but they square things up nicely. You can get the plastic from a local plastic supplier like Tap Plastics and have them cut it for you. All told, the pedestals cost us $8.15 apiece. We placed empty packaging boxes on top of them. Our pedestals allow easy access to the booth and allow one to quickly scan our goods while keeping clutter to a minimum.

We design our own signs. We then email the files to U Printing in California. They are super cheap and very quick. We usually receive the finished banners back in about a week. I know everyone can’t do this. In that case, I would spend a little more and get some expert advice and service from a local sign shop. The signs were between $75 and $125 apiece, probably our most expensive item.

The fabric banners and tablecloth are from the local fabric store. One yard gives us three banners, so the banners and tablecloth fabric on sale cost us about $20.

We splurged on a new, smaller folding, shippable table, which cost us $22 at Costco. The chairs, small and lightweight, cost $17 apiece at our local variety store.

The flooring is 2”x2”, 3/8” thick foam squares that puzzle together. We paid $104 for 125 square feet through GetRung. You can buy thicker ones, but the thinner ones ship great, and with the carrying case, they can go as checked baggage on a plane. So, we like the thinner ones better. You can also buy carpet squares or rent carpet for your booth.

The other goodies are plastic sign holders and easels that we get at Best Fixtures International, our local fixture supply store. They probably cost us about $20 for what you see there.

Other than a few office supplies and informational fliers, that’s about it for us. I am sure I am forgetting something, but I hope this helps you. Happy planning!

TRADE SHOWS PART 7 – FROM THE BEGINNING

I noticed that I have been getting rather haphazard about the trade show information. My intent was to take you step by step through the process, not to bounce around here and there with our experiences. Once again, be aware that this information is all based on our experiences, and others may be different, more efficient, cheaper, etc. Additionally, keep those comments coming! Every comment goes a long way toward the collective education of clueless entrepreneurs everywhere. At least those who tune in to this blog.

I previously covered why we do trade shows of various kinds (doesn’t mean you should), how to find out about them and whether to sign up and lay down your dollars.

You’ve decided to go ahead and sign up for one, either a public or buyer show (not open to public). Now what?

1. Download the manual or any other available materials and read them! We have learned to do this before we do anything else. It may take some time after you sign up for the show for the manual to be available online or mailed to you, but make sure you read it the as soon as possible after it becomes available. It tells you how and by what date to order exhorbitantly expensive electricity, video, scantily-clad women to show off your wares for you, carpet, booth setups, and just about anything else you may need (we don’t rent anything). It provides shipping information, driving instructions, decorating instructions and requirements, booth configurations, and many other things. We immediately calendar any relevant dates. We also decide, based on the move-in and move-out schedules, what our travel arrangements will be.

For a local street fair or other public show, there will be no manual, but you will receive instructional materials. You just mainly need to know what times and days you can move in and move out and by what means.

After reviewing the manual, we call or email and get any questions we still have answered. We also calendar the booth assignment date. We call if we have not received notice by that date. It sometimes happens that the event company will take your money and forget to put you in the system.

2. Think about how you will get your booth equipment to the show. Will you drive and unload yourself, fly and ship, fly and bring your stuff as luggage, or some other combination? This ties into the design of your booth as well. If you plan to have an armoire in your booth, you most likely will have to ship it unless you live in the same city as the show.

You will be inundated with faxes and emails from shipping companies that want to give you a quote for shipping your goods to the show, even in you live in the same city as the show. If you plan to ship, go ahead and get a few quotes. The shipping setups are extremely easy—the truck comes to your house and picks up your boxes, moves them to the show site, and delivers them to your booth. All you do is get to the show, unpack, and set up. Empty boxes are then stored and returned to you after the show. You simply repack the boxes at your booth, leave them there and take off!

We are based in Seattle. We shipped our booth to a show in Chicago and the bill for 300 pounds (there and back) was $1,006. In a lengthy conversation with the truck driver, we discovered that it’s not the trucking company making the money; it’s the company putting on the show. The trucking company would have charged us about $200 for the whole thing. The rest was handling charges the event company charged once the goods got to the show site. It was hard spending the money, but it was actually cheaper for us to do it this way than driving to Chicago. Could we have hired our own trucking company? Ya, but the price would have been about the same because the financial hosing took place at the show site, not in the truck along the way and the trucking companies have no control over the handling charges.

Our next show is in Las Vegas in May, and we will be driving down and doing our own freight handling because it’s cheaper than flying and shipping our goods.

So, those are the first two steps we take. Concurrent with this is the booth design, which I will cover at length in the next few entries.