Trade Show Nightmares

If you exhibit at enough trade shows, something bad is eventually going to happen. So as a public service, here is a list of things to bring with you, apart from the booth, samples, etc., based on true stories in our industry.

Bring an umbrella

It was ungodly hot in the Rosemont Convention Center during the ACCI show one summer. The air conditioners in the ceiling were really working hard, and one malfunctioned. Suddenly gallons of water poured out of the ceiling onto a ribbon exhibitor’s booth.

When it rains on you inside the convention center, it’s time to go home.

Bring a hard hat

Eventually the INRG cross stitch show moved into the new convention center in Charlotte. A janitor told me when the center first opened there were two conventions, one on each floor. The show on the second floor was for one of those direct-sale companies, such as May Kay Cosmetics. Apparently at one point it became a huge pep rally with hundreds (thousands?) of women jumping up and down.

When that happened, the ceiling tiles on the first floor began raining down on the attendees.

Bring boots

Just in case this happens again: I heard about a sewer backing up in an aisle at a trade show, spillage raw sewage onto the show floor.

Bring your putter

The final few old Ben Franklin shows were slow. Really slow. So slow that bored exhibitors created a miniature golf course in the aisles. I never heard who won the tournament.

Bring pajamas

One night in Atlanta two sales reps went out and celebrated a particularly successful trade show. They really celebrated. One, whom shall remain nameless, finally staggered back to his room, took off all his clothes, and collapsed on the bed.

A couple of hours later he awoke to answer the call of nature. Still “feeling no pain,” as my mother used to say, he went into the bathroom. But as the door slammed shut behind him, he realized he was not in the bathroom but in the hallway, stark naked.

Bring a censor

The old Craft World tried a huge Expo in Kansas City, but apparently forgot to tell retailers. The show was so empty and the exhibitors so bored that by the last day they were conducting sexually explicit make-it/take-its.

You started with a wooden bracelet, and then you painted a portion of a man’s anatomy on it, and then you glued two little pom poms – oh, never mind.

Bring your old booth

When I was editor at Profitable Craft Merchandising, we had a really nasty, falling-apart booth. Finally we ordered a new booth, but had to use the old booth one more time at the MATCH show in Philadelphia. We planned to junk the booth when the show ended.

Wouldn’t you know, we won the Best Booth award.

Bring armed guards

A few years ago a young couple packed in their van their booth, all of the samples, literature, etc. – everything they needed to exhibit at the Memorytrends show. They drove to Las Vegas, parked in the hotel parking lot, and checked in to their room.

The next morning they arose and went to their van only to find…. nothing. Their van had been stolen.

Bring… I dunno what

There was a horrendous windstorm one year during the floral show in Las Vegas. For some reason, when the main dock doors were opened, it created a wind tunnel that blew down a particular booth. Five times.

Bring your blinders

A friend told me about attending a crochet convention in an Atlanta hotel, which apparently was also hosting some sort of porn-stars convention. He said at one point he entered the elevator with a little old grandmother type who was there for the crochet event. Then, who gets on the elevator but a well-but-artificially-endowed, scantily clad star of some porn movie such as Debbie Does Dallas. He said it made for an interesting juxtaposition.

The trade show from hell

One year the HIA board decided to bring the [now] winter show back to Chicago, where it had been for many years. In January.

It was held at the McCormick Convention Center on the shores of Lake Michigan. Of course it was cold, very cold. I grew up in Chicago and was used to the miserable cold, but buyers and exhibitors from the Sun Belt suffered horribly. On set-up day, the dock doors were open all the time to bring in the booths. Ever try to set up a booth in sub-freezing temperatures?

Once these poor frozen folks received their booths at their booth space, they were descended upon by union workers, who wouldn’t allow them to erect their booths or even plug in their lights. Take your light cord and plug it into the wall? That’ll be $35.

The show was on one floor of the convention center, and a huge gift show was on the second floor. Both shows ended at the same time each night. There was only one hotel within walking distance, so when the shows ended, thousands of people had to wait for the shuttle busses. But the structure of the building at the time was such that only one bus at a time could pick up people. Buyers and exhibitors waited outside in the cold January winter for as much as 40 minutes for their shuttle bus.

Then the Bears won the Super Bowl. Show attendees were trapped in their hotel because the streets had been blocked off by rowdy, drunken Bears fans.

Then, on the last day of the show, the space shuttle blew up. A few exhibitors had televisions in their booth (left over from watching the Super Bowl two days earlier). Everyone at the show spent the day huddled around tv sets watching the tragedy. Virtually no business was done.

When the show mercifully ended, the union workers descended again and charged exhibitors for taking down the booths and unplugging the lights. Pull out the light cord? That’ll be $35.

xxx