Greeting Card Designer: Stationery Show Tips: The Booth

Here's one artists tips on setting up a booth at the stationery show:

Exerpt:

+ Flooring: If your booth decor has a really industrial feel to it, you could go with the bare, beat up, black cement floors of the Javits Center. We bought some carpet tiles at Flor (and took advantage of a free shipping promo). They were easy to install (no need for the adhesive dots even) and we can use them again and again. Plus, they held up great and still looked like new at the end of the 4 day show. (We made sure to get tiles that are made for heavy traffic.) A lot of vendors used these. I did see some vendors using those interlocking foam tiles, which were so comfy and nice to stand on. The ones that were printed to look like bamboo flooring were pretty convincing unless you stared at them up close.

+ Lighting: Whatever you do, don't think that the regular lighting from the Javits will be enough. There was a really nice booth on our aisle that didn't have any extra lighting. Even though it was decorated thoughtfully and the products were cute, the booth was so dim that it was difficult for the products to stand out. We decided to go with a parcan light from the Javits. It's a strong light -- the kind they use on Broadway. The problem was that it spotlighted the back wall, but didn't get the side walls very well. I saw some other vendors who were able to attach some arm lamps to the metal frame behind the foam core walls and were able to get much more controlled, even lighting all around their booth this way. Next year, this is what we want to do.

+ Furniture / Display: Like many other vendors, we relied on Ikea for the furniture in our booth. The cubby shelf and stools are from our office at home. Sitting with our knees crushed against the dashboard, were able to barely squeeze the shelf into the back of our little hatchback, along with our bags, products, etc...It didn't make for a very comfortable drive to New York, but at least we didn't have to pay to ship the furniture.
I liked the way the shelf and stools looked, but next year we decided that we'd like to try a taller counter or table with bar stools or chairs. That way, you can sit down and rest your feet but still be on eye level with people who come into your booth. We got this idea from other vendors around us, and let me tell you, it's a winner. Our feet/legs/hips/lower backs were killing us at the end of each day of the show. Even though we had stools in our booth, we didn't feel like we could sit on them because they were so low and made it awkward to converse with people walking into the booth.

Article Continued...

TRADE SHOW BOOKS