There is no denying it: it is expensive to produce and attend trade shows and conferences.

From the Chicago newspaper, this story (http://tinyurl.com/yfqyxq5) points out what we all knew was coming to the Northern and Eastern cities: your labor costs and rules are killing marketing budgets and the desire of businesses to use trade shows in their mix. Read More...

One of the biggest time savers in terms of getting things off and running with your I&D crew is staging freight around your booth. That is, arranging the crates with your exhibit packed in them for optimum use around the empty space.

I was fortunate enough at this show (the NACS show in Chicago for Retalix) to arrive early enough to meet the driver and work with the forklift driver. As the crates came off the truck, we spotted them around the empty floor space. I got to my “cage” first and that allowed me to get drawings, cables and other early-need items. The rest (carpet & pad, hanging sign, first cabinets) were then arranged as to sequential need.

A side benefit was that the booth space was “walled off” from the adjacent aisle and kept other forklift drivers from crossing the space. Read More...

I’m traveling on Wednesday to a show that is significant in American marketing and the trade show world: the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS). I’ve never been to this show, so this should be a treat and an experience.

The exhibition is held in conjunction with the NACS conference and educational sessions. The conference is aimed at the owners of and suppliers to convenience stores and deals with their issues which include everything from food marketing to cigarette theft to beer and lottery sales. This organization has been around since 1961 and is really a big part of the petroleum industry. It is nothing to sneeze at or take lightly: with almost 150,000 C-stores in the U.S. doing $570 billion in business ($400 million of it in petroleum sales), they are a significant part of our retail economy. Read More...