Posts filed under 'Trade Shows & Market'
I know SO many people who will be exhibiting at the ABC show this year. It’s coming up fast, can you believe it? We’re not going. I feel such a huge amount of relief at this fact, but don’t let that discourage you, I’m just really happy to be off the trade show stress circuit, it’s personal. But I want to pass my number one tip on to those of you who are going. I hope that this sinks in and you start making your calls now – make appointments, make appointments, make appointments.
I did not do this last year. This would have made this difference between an I-can’t-believe-I-made-it-through show and an AWESOME show. You have to look at this like cold calling, especially if you’re a first time exhibitor and you’re counting on this show to launch your product. You will be blown away by the number of vendors that they let exhibit there. The buyers will be absolutely exhausted and glossy-eyed by the time they hit the “first time exhibitors” area.
If you have appointments, you’ll keep your booth busy which will naturally peak the interest of passers by – increasing the flow of traffic at your booth. If you’ve made the calls, you’ll recognize company names on badges, and even if you didn’t snag an appointment on the phone, you have an opener “oh, I spoke with you briefly about the benefits…”
Perspective
Last year, there were 32+ rows of vendors on the bottom floor and I think about 20 on the top floor. 50+ rows of at least 20 vendors a row – how do you stand out? I’ve heard raves about doing the new product showcase, so I would jump on that opportunity if it’s still available. And of course, I’ve written a lot about the importance of an amazing display.
If this is your first trade show, here are some quick tips: don’t pitch buyers in the aisle, don’t jump out in front of them (you’ll get a feel for when a step out is different than hoarding all of their attention down the aisle). Only visit other vendors when there are no buyers present, and if you are visiting (there will be plenty of time for meeting your neighbors), step away when a buyer stops to view their products.
You can make the show a fantastic show, but you have to MAKE IT HAPPEN. Don’t rely on the show to bring everyone to you, get your name out there before the show. Work the phones, get as many appointments as you can. You’ll start a great amount of momentum now, and with two months behind it, you’ll blow yourself away at the show.
And HAVE FUN.
July 1st, 2008
I have four days to prep for the next event. This lightbulb is hitting me right now, at this moment. It’s a one day cash-n-carry show right here in San Diego (first in-town event – I can’t believe I don’t have to travel!). I’m ok with the product we have to take, but I have to get my head around other issues.
I’m happy to announce that my sales marathon is going GREAT, although my training sessions are no where near what I envisioned they would be…I can’t put nearly the hour a day into that I want to, but I am accomplishing that hour, or more, on many more days than I was previously.
The thing is that the sales stuff is going so great, and is thus so consuming, that I don’t have time to focus on the other things – like upcoming events. The surge in sales has presented all kinds of new juggling fun – which is why it’s good to grow; every new level presents new challenges.
Being a mom in business is pretty much craziness. I know I’m supposed to be sick right now, – my daughter came home with a fever today and I can feel that achiness, the hot / cold spells, the urge to sleep – but I don’t have time for that. I’m behind on things as it is. Like planning for upcoming events.
This weekend’s event is thrown by Appel & Frank. It will be held on Sunday, March 9, from 11 – 4 pm at the Abbey. I’m excited to be there – it looks like there are a couple of other children’s designers there, but I’m excited to see all the HOT, new, and fun women’s wear and accessories. How great for me, since I never ever get out shopping for myself, I can see some of the trend-setting stuff. FUN. I should also mention that I don’t really like shopping, so something like this is perfect – all in one space and all the good stuff.
If you are in Southern California and want to get an exclusive preview of San Diego’s newest and hottest upcoming designers at the Spring into Style event, just email me.
March 4th, 2008
Where did Amber go? It’s been a crazy time in my business-owner life since I last posted. We had a fabulous celebrity gifting event in January. I will do a post soon on what a difference our “spinning cake” display made for exposure during that event. (You can see the display cake pretty good in the photo to the right, follow the link above to view more celebrity photos).
I did a great follow-up job of coming home and writing up a press release. I even stayed up late to perfect it and get a bunch of images together to send to one big-traffic site. I got that sent and it paid off. We were featured the next morning.
Then I tweaked it a little for the other media outlets, put my computer on stand-by and never saw its happy face again. That was it, my computer crashed completely. I did an ok job of backups, except for my emails and email lists. Oh what a mistake that was – what a nightmare it has been catching up.
Get an external hard drive and set up automatic scheduled backups for all of your files. That’s my big duh-I-should-have-already-known-that lesson for the day. And I wanted to say I’m back and I really have a lot of posts coming up to share about press releases, affiliate programs, preparing for the next cash-and-carry events, creating a “wow” display, and all sorts of other things I’ve learned since the great crash of ’08.
February 15th, 2008
I don’t know why it took us a year’s worth of trade show and consumer events to realize that we need a custom-crafted display for our custom-crafted blankets. Oh wait, yes I do, because you can’t do it ALL!!
We finished a great even in Arizona over the weekend. As random things in life go, we heard about this seasonal gifting boutique through my sister-in-law and decided to give it a try. It turned out to be great for us; way more traffic there than the Hollywood shopping boutique we did a few weeks ago.
This last event finally made us see that no matter how we used the standard backdrops or garment racks or tables or shelves – our blankets are not displayed to their fullest potential. I spent time watching people as they would walk up to to our booth, so I could track where their eyes went. About 80% of the time their eyes went to the table, many times they never looked up behind us – where we had the blankets hung. We have too many other products to take up the whole top of a table with a blanket.
Now, we’ve sketched an idea for a simple, yet stunning display that will work for the blankets, will convey that they are personalizable, and will work with various booth height requirements. Booth height requirements matter at trade shows because sometimes you have the liberty of going up 8′ and sometimes only 4′.
So, the goal is to have the new display ready by the next event. Which should be easy, but I think I’m always telling myself that!
November 14th, 2007
Now that I’m sitting here with a bit of hindsight, I can see that what I thought was a decent marketing plan before launching wasn’t much of a plan at all. Our first year was very reactionary. As opportunities were thrown at us we’d decide if they sounded like a good idea or not – and we’d see where we could stretch the budget to jump on board.
So, now that we’re entering year two of being in business, we sat down and had a marketing plan meeting. We’re changing course in some ways and are going to try a couple of new things. In other ways, we just need to be more committed.
This doesn’t mean that we won’t evaluate new opportunities as they come our way, but we’re committed to not give into the sense of urgency that is put on every single opportunity.
We also made the concrete decisions for the first quarter – we’re skipping on some magazine advertisements in favor of a couple of more direct sales routes. We’re focusing on our in-store displays and marketing materials a little more and we’re picking up sales reps so we can focus on direct boutique sales more than trade shows. We’ll also do small ads on some online sites, which is much less cost than magazine advertisements. We’ll commit more a regular newsletter and direct mailing also.
Now all we have to do is actually implement the plan!!
October 29th, 2007
Finally! A picture of our booth at the ABC Show. Takes me forever to get pictures off our camera and uploaded and even
this picture cut off the top of the booth. But that was our booth at the show.
I see so many things that I would change already. We’re not at the point of having a hardwall booth yet, which I would love. I don’t know how much of a difference that would make. It is definitely different to do a show that has low (3′) sidewalls, vs. a show that has full 8 ft sidewalls.
Someday I’m going to come up with the perfect way to display our blankets. They need to be spread out so the name is eye-catching, but I also want to show that there is a variety of options.
Like I said in a previous post, all we can do is get better each time. Can you tell that I don’t like this booth anymore? Almost sounds like I’m trying to make excuses, but it is HONESTLY leaps and bounds above our first trade show display booth.
But you know, it’s a reminder that you have to just start somewhere and go for it. No matter what, you’re always going to want to make it better; there is always a part of you that will feel like if you just change this or that, THEN you’ll be ready to launch; THEN you’ll be ready to show off. But really, you have to just leap, you have to give yourself permission to have room for improvement. Make sure you believe in the quality of your products before leaping, of course. Quality matters a lot.
Basically, if we expect it to be perfect before we go for it, we’ll never start, we’ll never meet our own expectations (=misery), and we’ll miss the whole journey. Someday I’ll have a great trade show booth – for now we’re doing the best we can and trying different things each time.
October 4th, 2007
I feel so “seasoned” with a few trade shows under our belt. I remember talking to booth neighbors at my first trade show and they said “you’re so brave to come here and do this when you’re so new”. I said, “brave or naive”, with a smile.
Everyone had to start small, everyone had to start somewhere. The first trade show actually goes along with thoughts I’ve been mulling around in my head about perfection. I thought we were perfectly ready for our first show. We’ve come a long ways, but we have a long ways to go for me to be happy with our presentation.
It’s a learning experience and you do the best you can. I think that signs and visuals and a good display are important. It doesn’t matter how fancy the display is, but it does matter how well it displays your products. This is somthing we’re still working on, especially for our blankets.
Some startups have the budget to invest in a professional booth design company, or even friends with construction experience; we’re learning as we go. We believe in our creativity and I find that confidence alone can carry you a long ways.
I’ve also noticed that good lighting helps a trade show display immensely. You usually have to pay extra costs for the electricity, which is why we skipped it for our first two. But we probably would have done better to have just splurged for it. Do whatever you can to setup a mock booth before you leave for the show – you won’t believe how different it really looks in person, you’ll find things that you want to change.
In the end, having a good, high-quality set of samples and an agreement form is the most important for your sales at the tradeshow. Make sure you outline your expected shipping dates, get the required customer information, and get their signature on the order form.
I hated not having flooring at the first trade show. The default was a wild carpet which really threw the look of our booth off. There are a lot of little pieces to pull together, but with each one under your belt, it gets easier.
October 3rd, 2007
Now I’m going to talk about the incredibly dissappointing aspects of the trade show. Which, in my opinion, all stem from the size of the show. Let’s talk about the fact that since the show, I’ve received an uncountable number of emails from people all saying exactly the same thing: “I’m so sorry, I really wanted to see you at the show, but never made it to your booth”. The whole reason we pay a lot of money is for exposure, to get our products in front of people, to pick up new clients. Which absolutely can not happen if those buyers that ARE there can’t make it through the whole show.
The rumor was that when the JPMA show announced it was closing its doors, everyone flooded the ABC Show with requests to exhibit. So the ABC show just added more space. Gone was the “sold out” point, as if it had never exhisted.
I kid you not that if the buyers made it to our row, row 15, their eyes were so glazed over they just weren’t looking at things anymore. I even had people who were already my clients almost pass me up just because of sheer exhaustion. Not only was the bottom floor huge, there was a huge second floor also. Just a big blur of baby stuff.
Here’s how I feel about the amount of traffic they brought to the show: if I had just spent the same amount of time on direct sales & cold calls – the time I did preparing for the show, travelling to the show, setting up, showing, and tearing down the booth, – I would have picked up a hell of a lot more clients. I would have had more exposure walking into boutiques.
But I guess that’s worth a test, maybe next month, I’ll focus all that same energy and time on direct sales to boutiques and see what the outcome is.
I never even made it up to the second floor of the show. I called the last day of the show, a Monday, “exhibitor show and tell.” Buyers were outnumbered by bored and browsing exhibitors at least 8 to 1.
But never fear – they’ve promised to add even ANOTHER day onto the event next year. I guess they could make it family day.
This doesn’t even get into how the show was run. Messy bathrooms, no food or drink available after 4:00 pm (even vending machines at either end of the hall were either unplugged or broken). So right when you hit a wall, and need a beverage or a little boost, you have to exit completely. But, no worries, the show is open to 6:00 for those willing to suffer through it.
On the bright side, Pregnany magazine threw a wonderful dinner / cocktail party that was very enjoyable. I met incredible people at the show, so there is always good and bad. At the time that you are standing for hours in empty rows, it’s easy to get fired up about it. But you also have to take some responsibility for not drawing the traffic to your booth, and not doing enough of the pre-show work.
And numerous people have followed up, even those I didn’t get a chance to meet. I met press and made new industry contacts, met fellow entrepreneurs, and gained immeasurable experience just by going through that alone.
And I slept. I actually got some good nights of rest, which is a small miracle in itself.
September 23rd, 2007
Okay, here I am to talk about the dang trade show. I think I’ll start from the beginning so today is going to be about shipping and getting your product to the show. I live close enough to Vegas to drive. So, true to my nature, I work right up to the last minute. The show had a full 24-hour move-in, so I knew that whenever I got there in the evening, I’d have time to move in.
I went by myself. My husband was going to go, but we couldn’t take my daughter out of her kindergarten class the very first week of school. This is where we’re at, so off I went. The drive was fine. The move-in was a different nightmare all together.
Our booth was, in my opinion, a million miles away from the main entrance – the only entrance you’re allowed to hand move-in through. I about died when I walked in and saw how far I was going to have to “carry” everything. We were actually on row 15. Which wasn’t anywhere near as far back as we could have been – the size of the show is my next post.
I was moving stuff to our booth until 2:00 in the morning. The only thing that saved me was this old-school baby pram (buggy) we had purchased as a means of displaying our blankets. That thing became my dolly. But it took a lot of trips. And I still had to hand-carry the carpet – which I saved to last and I had to chant “that-the-that which don’t kill me, can only make me stronger” to myself the whole way to keep from crumbling to the floor in a ball of tears.
I got the booth setup by 3:30 in the morning. Well, I saved some of it for the morning, taking the risk and assuming that the first hour would be slow. Buyers wouldn’t even make it to row 15 in an hour. I also knew that there was no way in hell I was moving out the same way I moved in.
Turned out that most of the vendors around me also had various shipping issues to deal with. Some had shipped via UPS instead of the exhibition’s shipping services. This meant that they also had to deal with the hand-carry issue, because UPS was offsite shipping.
I signed up for the cartload program to get me out of there. They loaded my stuff on one cart and got it out to my car in about 5 minutes. Of course, that was after quite a wait because the line for the cartload program was huge (which goes back to the size of the show also).
So, many of you haven’t done your first trade show to know what a nightmare the logistics are. After the few I’ve done, I fully believe it is worth it to use the exhibition’s shipping services and just bite the bullet. Some savvy people only had to box their stuff and saran-wrap it. They dropped off the shipping labels early on the last day, vendors boxed up their stuff, stuck those labels on and walked away.
Far less painful and time consuming than getting your product out of the hall yourself. I paid $45 for them to load my stuff and tote it out – I can’t tell you how cheap that sounded after moving myself in.
September 20th, 2007
I’m back from the show and still going. There were so many things about the show that were great and there were so many things that were disappointing. Getting back in the middle of the week and keeping the momentum until the weekend was nuts. My daughter just started kindergarten, so that’s been a whole new schedule to get used to – flexibility is the motto of the business owner isn’t it?And I just LOVED missing most of her first week for business.
I had the wonderful experience of meeting a few of you at the show and over the next couple of weeks I’d like to take time to highlight your companies. I know that a few of you had really great experiences with press, exposure, and new clients.
I just want to say that all of us who exhibited (or attended, bless your hearts and feet) should be extremely proud of ourselves for growing our companies to the point where we’re exhibiting at shows, gaining press, meeting industry newbies and veterans, and really doing it. Congrats to all of you, you had wonderful booths and great product lines. We should appreciate all of these milestones on our way up…
I’ll be back with more useful info in the next few days. Happily, I’m still busy getting new accounts set up and running.
September 18th, 2007
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