Excerpt:
What were some of your biggest challenges for prepping for the show?
Prepping for any tradeshow is a lot of work, but fortunately I’ve been to tradeshows in the past and had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. This being the first time that my products and ideas were going to be on display and the fact that the company was so new, I did struggle with some basic business concepts when getting ready for the show — making my branding consistent, where to set pricing and how much product do I need to bring?
The other struggle is a pretty obvious one, but tradeshows are expensive! From the exhibit space, electricity, your actual booth components, pre-show marketing, prepping your products… it really starts to add up (and all of it needs to be ordered separately)!
Any tips/advice for anyone wanting to exhibit at the National Stationery Show?
- Booth: When designing your booth choose light weight, easy to ship and install materials, that still reflects your brand & style. And, if you can store your shipping materials behind your booth, do so. It can sometimes take hours after the show for your empty containers to be returned to you.
- Networking: Bring lots of business cards and don’t be shy about asking people that stop into your booth for their business card if they don’t offer it — you can’t follow-up if you don’t know who they are. And, of course do make time for follow-up after the show even if its just a quick email.
- Catalogs vs. Line Sheets: Suggest handing out one page line sheets rather than bulky catalogs — again, less to carry and/or ship, and cheaper to print. You can always send a catalog as follow-up if someone really wants one. Also, don’t forget to put together some press kits for the press room. We dropped off 25 small kits which included a press release about us being at the show, our line sheet, our pre-show marketing postcard and a business card. Each piece had our complete contact information on it. By the second day, we only had 5 kits left in the press room… so I’ll likely prep more next year and I might include some samples in the kit.
Article continued...
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1 comment:
Hi Kate -- thanks for including an excerpt from our interview with Perideau Designs here! Hope to meet you at this year's show. We'll be in booth 1563, and would love to meet you.
-Katie, Kelp Designs
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