Show and Tell
From the smallest first-time exhibitor in a 10-by-5-foot space to the organizer of a mega-show, trade show exhibitors and those who put on the shows share one goal: strong sales.
Big doesn’t always do it, nor does perfect placement guarantee it. Beyond strong product, the secrets to trade show success can depend on the confluence of a variety of factors: knock-your-socks-off visuals, strong floor sales staff, aggressive pre-show outreach to clients, solid organization.
A booth placement in trade-show Siberia once was salvaged by the simple rental of a popcorn machine; a gotta-have-it giveaway has been a godsend for many a little-known company.
The following trade show veterans offer their advice—and cautionary tales—about how to create a successful trade show experience.
Putting on a mega-show
Material World, by most industry standards, is a monster of a show. Featuring fabric, trim, and sourcing, and heavy on apparel-related technology, the event hosts some 425 exhibitors from around the world occupying some 500 booths in Miami Beach and now New York in massive convention center space. For Tim von Gal, partner in Urban Expositions and the owner/manager/producer of Material World, his job often is less pure organizer than maitre d’ at a posh restaurant politically negotiating the seating desires of a lot of important people at the same time.
“It’s always a great thing when you can give an exhibitor what they want,” he says.
“Sometimes, you have to be careful about thinking you already know what someone’s wishes for the show are. One time, a couple of companies who were close competitors we figured would want distance but with positions seen as equally advantageous. These were both very large installations and took half a day of juggling spaces to do it. We found out later that each of them separately was saying, ’Why did you put us so far away from the other? We would have liked to have been closer.’
“Hopefully,” says von Gal, “you are smarter the next time out.”
Compounding the logistical issues is the fact that Material World is almost entirely hard-wall—that is, walls made of melanite with aluminum extruded framing. “It really gives a much upgraded look and feel than the standard pipe-and-drape system,” says von Gal, “and there is much more privacy.”
Hard-wall is gaining in popularity, but it doesn’t leave much room for mistakes.
Von Gal starts by doing a preliminary floor plan based on “knowing many of these companies over the years, what their plans are, how much they normally take.” Exhibitors are encouraged on the application form to list companies they cannot be placed next to. “Some people strike through it and say, we would like to be next to the following,” von Gal says.
Bigger companies often take multiples of the basic 10- by-10-foot booth. DuPont at one show took 95 booths, Proexport U.S.A., which represents the Colombian apparel industry, takes between 20 and 40, and Cotton Inc. asks for up to 30 booths.
About 20 to 30 companies do custom booths, others work with the show decorator to make their mark. “It is extremely important to make a great presentation visually to distinguish your company,” von Gal says. He cites the example of one software company that used eight booths and intricate computer and big machinery setups to demonstrate the quickness of its garment development cycle, from design to delivery. This real-time application generated excitement, and, von Gal says, “they were very successful.”
However important presentation may be, it is less important, von Gal says, than another factor.
“The key to success more than anything else,” he says, “is preparation. The exhibitors who set appointments in advance with prospective attendees are by far the most successful.
Those who prepare the attending audience for their participation in the show—who solicit an appointment with prospective clients—separate themselves from everyone else.” Show managers, he continues, “should help exhibitors do that any way they can.” For that reason, Material World provides exhibitors with invitations they can personalize.
“Even if they don’t respond,” von Gal says, “when they walk by that booth, they will remember.”
The indie: if you build it, they will come
When Drew Bernstein was young and edgy and in a punk band, “I was always into presentation,” he says, “how we look onstage, our whole vibe.” In 1985, when he was a little older and still edgy, and launching his clothing line Lip Service, featuring skull-and-dagger-print leggings, “I noticed first thing,” he says, “that some people did their own custom displays” at the trade shows.
A builder by desire, if not by formal training, Bernstein fashioned his own booth in his parents’ yard to ship to New York for the Boutique show.
Measuring a mere 10 feet long by 5 feet wide (“you could touch both ends by stretching your fingertips— a half-booth for starving kids doing clothing”), the display featured a PVC pipe structure with metal mesh frames hung with black, white, and red colored paper, and suspended silver metal grids “that I hung the product on,” he recalls. “Very eighties. It worked.”
Bernstein has been designing and building his own trade show booth ever since.
Over the past 20 years, Bernstein’s company, The Original Cult Inc., has grown to include not only Lip Service (“hardcore fetish and club fashion”), but also Blacklist (“modern gothic”), and Kill City (“young, loud rock ’n’ roll”). For admittedly niche markets, Bernstein has garnered quite a bit of general attention—and a best booth in show prize at MAGIC in 2003—by the pure power of his vision.
One year, it was a barbed-wire enclosure, another an elevated boxing ring–style stage, another a storefront. His prizewinner involved a live fashion shoot (for the company catalog) on a catwalk high above the booth floor, with strobes flashing and models sashaying night and day. That design broke any number of MAGIC rules, Bernstein guesses, but drew critical kudos, nonstop traffic, and a trophy “that sits on my bedside table.”
For Bernstein, design is all about passion. “I used to walk around MAGIC a long time ago, and I’d see billiondollar companies doing 50 booths double-decker, and I’d say, who am I, I’m a nobody,” he says. “But I would put more effort and passion into my booth than they did even though I had a little space. My execution and realization I believe kicked ass on them.”
Anything can give him inspiration. “I close my eyes and visualize the show and what I want the presentation to look like,” Bernstein explains. Sometimes the eureka moment comes in the middle of the night. The keys to a successful design, he says, are creativity, being “unique in approach and materials,” and “customer friendly.”
“The visual thing has to work,” he says, “but it also has to function well for customers and the reps.”
Bernstein pays a price—literally—for his ambition, ranging from $5,000 to $40,000 over the years. “You do a budget,” he says, “but you spend more always. It’s like remodeling a house—you say, screw it, I’m going to buy it anyway.”
While strong design has helped Bernstein gain credibility and respect for his company, the years have also given him a new perspective. “Now I walk through the show, and I realize that whether you’re Wal-Mart or Lip Service, we all have the same challenges,” he says. “They just have way more zeroes.”
The pros: moving on to Plan B
One of the first things you notice about the design company Plan B is its unusual name.
“A lot of people come to us when other people make mistakes, or a project got out of control and there’s no time left,” explains vice president Jason Castillo.
In other words, plan A having failed, time for Plan B—hand over your troubles to a design and construction specialist.
Castillo and president Michael Landi are skilled in mechanical engineering and entertainment construction, including retail interior design and, increasingly, trade show booths for apparel industry shows. Their design for lush T-shirt line Skinny Minnie, an evocative, two-story, old New Orleans–style house, was a prize winner.
The pair has a strong background in retail display for companies such as Nautica, Victoria’s Secret, Skechers and Ralph Lauren, even constructing pairs of kicking legs for Old Navy. Castillo has an appreciation for much of what he sees at MAGIC. “There are some good designers,” he says, “but a lot of these booths are hard to assemble. Trade show booths should be easy to put up, and the design should lend itself to easy installation.”
Plan B will work with a client’s rough sketches or con-cepts, but the project is most cost-effective, Castillo says, when Plan B does the design itself, “since we can build in the savings.” The biggest challenge is a client, or client’s designer, with a vision that exceeds the client’s budget. “We never, ever, ever go over budget,” Castillo says. “The most important thing when working with someone is, don’t let him go down a path with a design that would blow up the budget.
We pride ourselves on being fiercely protective of the budget, and that’s what most of our clients like about us.”
The price of customizing may not be for the feint-of-heart. Castillo estimates that a substantial apparel show booth, with Plan B doing the design, will run between $40,000 and $60,000, but includes all show fees and drayage. With newbies or experienced clients, the goal is the same: “To get the person sales.”
“Brand ID” is “really key,” Castillo believes.
“There are so many competitors at these trade shows, you have to have something that differentiates you from the pack.” The success of the Skinny Minnie booth was the perfect marriage of visual imagery—the French cafeacute;–style building, with old ironwork and distressed wood—and the company’s romantic clothing.
“Most clients realize they increase in productivity when they do a customized booth,” Castillo says. “Foot traffic increases, and then you let the sales staff do their work.”
The intimate space
The Los Angeles International Textile Show, held twice annually at the California Market Center, is the biggest of its kind in the country, and the hallmark of the event has been its boutique-style layout. Show organizers have traditionally placed the 300 or so foreign and U.S. exhibitors into three separate exhibition halls and some 90 private showrooms on upper floors, while many CMC tenants choose to exhibit out of their permanent showrooms. Trends are showcased in the lobby. The more than 100,000 square feet of space is broken down into “intimate” settings, “not an overwhelming convention center–type of show,” CMC trade show director Yvette Beltran explains.
But the layout is about to change with the next show, scheduled for April 2006. The building is planning a remodel for the 13th floor, including adding more open-floor space.
“Based on feedback, we have found that attendees prefer one location,” Beltran says. “They would rather see all product in one area.”
Beltran’s challenges in mounting the elaborate show are simplified in one sense: the L.A. Textile Show prides itself on being “the biggest fashion-focused show,” she explains, “and we don’t dilute it by incorporating technical exhibitors—there are no sewing machines or big machinery.”
What there is is fabric, findings and trimmings—thousands and thousands of yards of it—an eye-popping immersion in color, texture and pattern. For most exhibitors, decorating a booth becomes a relatively simple matter of draping the goods down walls, from racks and on tables, to opulent effect. “The fabric makes beautiful deacute;cor,” Beltran notes. “And we encourage deacute;cor.”
For example, Hemp Traders, a small, local organic fabric company, has become something of the show’s darling. “They are really creative,” Beltran enthuses. “The booth is very much decorated in an organic theme, like a tropical jungle with all this faux greenery hanging down and textured brown hemp fabric draped in places. It’s really fun and inviting.”
Another American company, Michael Miller, a cotton-print purveyor, “always does a fabulous retro and vintage theme with the booth, echoing what is in their prints for the season,” says Beltran.
That is not to say that the L.A. Textile Show presents no challenges at all. There is always the issue of who goes where. “We found we can never predict,” Beltran says. “Sometimes lace doesn’t want to be near other lace, but then we have leather companies that want to be near each other. It goes back to letting exhibitors know they are responsible for their special needs. We do try to develop personal relationships with each and every exhibitor. We want to accommodate them as much as possible, and we are grateful to each one. And that’s why we have such a high retention rate.quot;
The logic behind the logistics
“It’s a large investment companies are making,” Bari observes. “Proper planning gives a better return on investment. Poor Planning costs you money.quot;
Tips from Plan B
