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Trade Show Booth Design

Lesson 26 from: Sell Your Products to Retailers

Megan Auman

Trade Show Booth Design

Lesson 26 from: Sell Your Products to Retailers

Megan Auman

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Lesson Info

26. Trade Show Booth Design

Lesson Info

Trade Show Booth Design

What makes a great trade show booth when we talked to giselle and kelly are guest buyers they really emphasized you have to have a standout booth at a show there's so much going on it's so overwhelming there's so many booth so you have to have that and help it stand out so what makes a great booth? First of all, you're both sets the tone for your products we talked about my not so great first trade show booth, this is me what? Not to dio um and this was a case where having this booth, you know, I got a lot of price resistance in a booth like this, so if your booth doesn't hold up to the pricing and the branding and your products it's not really going to support you in having that great trade show should also help buyers imagine your products in their store, so typically with a trade show booth and we're not going to have, you know, six is twelve's of things like someone might have in a store, but we still want to help them get a sense that it's a retail space. This is one of those reas...

ons that I think it's super important not to scrimp on display right? Because a buyer they're not throwing out a card table in their store and tossing some product on it so you really shouldn't be either it's also important to think about you know what that store might look like so this is my second trade show booth those two images are only like three weeks apart so clearly I stepped up my game or really quick huh? But this one is still not great because it feels more like a gallery space than actual store and while I do have a few galleries that carry my work it's very much stores and this was just a little too outside of what they're doing and how their merchandising with their customers the other thing is we're going to talk about you know, really being creative in your booth but don't be so clever that it distracts from your product because that is absolutely possible so I did this once at a show and I thought I'm going to take these really cool pictures I have this other product which is this cuff so I had my model you know pretend she's holding the jewelry we took these photos I pinned him to the wall and here's what happened people were like oh my god that's such a clever display that's so amazing when they walk by that was like but jewelry I am selling jewelry so you can absolutely be a little too creative in your booth display so you absolutely exercise that creativity but don't push so far because most buyers they're not doing this in their store right? So the number one thing that I do when I'm thinking about trade show and the way that I want you guys to start to think about your booth is not to design for a specific floor plan first it's really easy to be like I got my ten by ten I'm gonna looked out at that square and I'm gonna design from my floor plan that's a strategy that then traps you into a certain size and doesn't let you your booth evolve as you go from trade show to trade show becomes hard to kind of use those fixtures, so what I want you guys to think about doing is defining your aesthetic and then you're going to create a set of fixtures that can be adapted to any situation you know, whether at that a certain size trade show booth, maybe a slightly different sized trade show booth, maybe that's the creative live set um, you know, and this is a case where, you know, I couldn't bring the fixtures right, but I could still pull out the elements, so this is actually what I call my suitcase booth everything fit in to free checked bags on southwest the table's came with the show, so you can take this aesthetic and go from booth to booth to booth, and it starts to build a brand so regardless of my floor plan and regardless of the space that I have, I can make it work because I've got these fixtures and it even works if I'm adding a new product so I don't have to reinvent my booth I pulled my fixtures, I thought about how I wanted to kind of change the flow and I made that work so that's, where we're going to start with you guys is thinking about the overall aesthetic and feel of your booth. I want you to think about the mood that you want to create so a couple of challenges for you if you could describe your brands aesthetic or style in two or three words, what would they be? Anyone want jovin fell welcoming with energy oh, so like warm but peppy yeah, yeah, I love it. Who else? Modern, fresh and vibrant. Yeah, and yours is definitely, like, colorful. It has to play in there, so and it might not. That might be more your products than your booth. So I think I love you think about the word fresh. Yeah. So like for me, I kind of play on this idea of, like, what I call subtle contrast. So, like, I've got the contrast, but it's not stark it's, not black and white, you know, I've got a little bit texture, I got a little feeling in there clearly there's a color palette that I love on dso you want to think about that too, but what's the mood or vibe that you would like to create in your booth so welcoming is perfect like you want to draw people in I always joke with people were going to talk about flooring and there's this great like foam comfy flooring that you can buy and I don't use it I use, like the big her concrete floor and everyone's like, but it's so inviting for your buyers like my brain is not about about inviting, like that's, not what I do, it's, not the spa like I want there to be just that little bit of edge, like it's it's, easy, but there's a little bit of toughness in there, so I wanna make you stand on the bare concrete floor in my book suffer, and you're gonna like it exactly there, so maybe look into the jewelry they don't even notice anyway, eso what's that mood or vibe that you want to create? And then what is the main color palette of your booth? And what do these colors communicate about your brand? You know, what are you actually telling people so if your brand is urban and edgy, you're not gonna be using earth tones in your booth, right? No lindsay's brand is bright and vibrant there's not going to be black in there no blacks, no muted tones, no heavy colors, right, fun light of lifting. So what are the colors going? Communicated kate about your brand and you also want to start to think about a color palette that you khun stick with for a little bit of time. I know some people who, you know, they change their booth color every show I'm not saying that you have to stick with it forever, but you should at least stick with it for a couple of shows because I can't tell you now we just looked at five different versions of my booth it's pretty consistent I've been nunu your gift with that particular booth two shows a year believe that booth has been in play her version of it for the last three or four years every show right up into this very last one people say I don't remember you are you new here? It's really hard for me not to be like are you new here? But people don't remember it's a big show it's super overwhelming, so if you could help them out with that consistency oh, meghan's booth is the dark gray walls with those white canvases on it, right, we get it, we know that's megan's booth so I gave you guys this homework over break and hopefully you had a little fun and a little chance to play with that so this is where you're going to start any time you're gonna start booth design we're not starting with floor plan we're not starting with pictures we are starting with that mood board so we're always going to start in that direction now let's start to talk about the kind of layout of your booth designed so your start you've got the aesthetic nail down now you're going to start to think about fixtures and pieces of your booth so the number one rule in trade show booth design that everybody breaks is what I call the two foot rule so when we design our booth if we're not thinking about that overhead floor plan we think about it like this right? You'd have the diagram straight on here is my booth this is what it looks like this is how you think about your booth this is how a buyer sees your booth right? They are not walking walk in stop, huh? Like they're like well, my cellphone and walking quick right you've to catch their attention right in that little space so the most important things in your booth are going to be in the first two feet first two feet of your booth if you want to know what that looks like this is about two feet right here first two feet I'm put in my best selling necklace right there on the corner first two feet right there grab your attention something big something bold something they're gonna see because that's what they see they don't see they're never gonna look at your booth this life I'm actually standing in my neighbor's booth across the way to take this picture so they're not doing that so we really want to think about pushing everything forward always pushing forward I would rather have an entirely blank back wall and just put the product in the first two feet I don't miss any of that real estate and you can see here actually in this picture this is a slightly older version of the booth I could do a little better right there's there's some blank real estate happening there um this is one canoe too we talked about them before amazing stationery company they nail the two foot rule they also happen to be alumni of my wholesale academy so you know, I can take a lot of credit but I can take a smidge so they nail this that is pushed all the way out you can see how they cheat the cards they're not centered on this back wall there's more space to the corner they're right up against the ill we looked down the aisle they're super noticeable because not everyone is pushing that product out there seeing they're stopping and it's really grabbing people's attention so that's the number one rule and if we're thinking about this idea of making pictures that you can move around you can play with that rule so I can take this and I can move it forward I can play with it and see what really works for my booth so one of the other things that you can think about is should you adapt your retail booth into your wholesale booth some of you might have already done some retail shows some of you might have some craft shows on your belt and so you want to think about you know do you want to keep those pictures can you use some of them so and I think this might look a little familiar so take a look at anna's booth for a minute just because this is a great example of how we can talk about what's different between a retail booth and a trade show booth right so in a retail booth you've gotta have a lot of product you have to have all the sizes people need to see everything in a trade show both right not so much so I wouldn't give you just a really quick a good example so I talked actually about occasion et which is sarah solution store there are also has a line called girls comptel like the same girl so this is sarah so when sarah does a retail show it's gonna look a lot like this she's gonna have stacks of product is going to be in there this is our wholesale booth one of everything boom boom boom boom boom and done so for you anna you have to figure out you know do you love any of these pictures do you want to keep them? Can they work in that new presentation of your product or do you want to kind of start from scratch you any questions about that years like brains turn and now like oh yeah how so I want to show you the other half of this booth actually while we're talking about it because this is a great example both of a shared space so one half other half sarah split this with beehive handmade on dh so this is a perfect example teo of how you take products and showcase them like they might be seen in a store but make it easy for a buyer to buy so they took this middle table and they merchandised it obviously it helps the sarah has a store she's gotten really good at merchandising but then both of them utilize the walls here's the product product item number super easy presentation work your way down the wall order order order order so that's how you kenbrell alan ce what's it gonna look like in a store with the efficiency that you need for taking orders at a trade show all right, so let's talk about the display pieces that you're going to need and kind of all of the pieces of your booth because I know that people are wondering like where do I get stuff? Meghan right, what if I can have someone filled me these? What if I don't the creative live team to build me these magic pieces? They're amazing guys can like, yeah, creative like team built these specifically for this can we hire that way? So I actually want to take them home, I think they're really s so what do you do if you don't have the creative life team so let's talk about some of the things that you're gonna need so the first one is you know, are you gonna have hard walls or pipe and drape? How will you hang things? So for me, you know, we want that to foot rule, but hanging product is so important as well, because we need to get these multiple what I call like hand I an overhead levels in our booth so this is my hand level, you can see it's a little low, I'm looking down. So what is this? Encourage touch and remember we love touch, but then I'm gonna hang product and hanging product helps because you see it immediately you're walking it's going to catch your eye we've got this product and it's really great but what I found is that people are much less likely to touch a hanging product when I have a scarf here they don't tend to touch it as much when I take a scarf and I bundle it up and I stick it on the table I found like who what is this right so we need this because it brings people in but we need this so they can touch then we also need the above head height because what happens is people end up in your booth so can you come here because you're you're tall tiffany from two real less tall but so you've got stuff hanging and the creative live team did a really good job back here of giving us some height but stand in front of us like your guys are looking at some product right? So we've got a bunch of buyers in our booth right and if this starts to get crowded and there's nothing a little bit higher than that I can't see what's going on as I'm walking down the aisle now the good news is that a crowd usually draws a crowd right but we still want to go a little bit higher tiffany's gonna try everything way still want to go a little bit higher so that we get that as well so you want to take you guys to sit down thank you ladies um so we want to think about magic earrings everywhere it's so durable that you could drop it on the floor or run it over not gonna not gonna be damaged so we want to think about hanging and so we were thinking about hanging we are thinking about this, you know, hard walls or pipe and drape and so those are terms that you're gonna hear pipe and drape hard walls pipe and drape is exactly what it sounds like pipes set up in your booth fabric draped so for a lot of shows, this is the standard booth package okay uh in this case that drape is exactly what they gave me. I never recommend just using the drape that comes with show and here's why lots of other people are using it and then you all end up with booze they're the same color, right? Nothing stands out, so if you're going to use pipe and drape at least put something else on it so here you know, I'm still using the pipe and drape, but I mixing in some other, you know, fabrics, mother colors starting it a little more kind of a brand story happening there should be clear I don't love either one of these booths says evolution of my booth but that's what you could do with pipe and drape for you so they put the pipe up for you they put the drape up for you. Oh, soo's, give them well, they put up their drink. Okay, so typically what happens is your drape and your neighbors drape are the same drape. Yeah, so anything that you're hanging, you can't take down the pipe, slide there's off and put yours on ok, you have to hang it in front of it. Probably what you're going to dio you're getting a nice little s hook, one part goes the top. Your curtain other part hangs over the pipe and that's absolutely ok that's that's standard procedure there but you can see windpipe and drape it's difficult to hang things. You can certainly hang things off the pipe, but not if they're heavy, so I'm not going to take something like this and hang it off. The show is pipe because it's going to come crashing down and then they're going to yell at me, right? So that is the challenge with pipe and drape. The other thing that I think is a challenge with pipe and drape is that it doesn't give you that I'm in the store impression, especially if your aesthetic is more clean, modern to me, it's sort of like the easiest solution. And I want to be clear, I did a lot of pipe andre booths for awhile I was not like I went straight to some of those hard walls I did this so don't feel like if you can't do hard walls which were and talk about a minute you can't do a show, but this has its drawbacks it's one of the nice alternatives to pipe and drape is big sheets of foam core so vicky was nice enough vicky hallmark was nice enough to let us use this image of her booth. So what? She got r eight foot tall sheets of white foam core and at the top I know it's really hard to see, but I hear the top they're actually cable tied to the pipe cable ties it ties there your trade show best friend so it's just right there now you're not hanging anything heavy on that foam core, but you can certainly hang images and if your product's light, you can hang product. So this is my friend meghan riley so she's using black phone poor so that's an option as well and she is literally pinning her product straight to the foam core, so foam core is a really great option as kind of a nice stepping stone between the pipe and drape and getting a hard wall booth I'm now this is something that typically you can run it from the show, but it tends to be pretty expensive anytime you read something from the show gets a little pricey you khun by these from an art supply store you call up in advance it used to be that you ordered them from you tracked but dick clique bought you tracked and close some of their stores so called dick blick call another art supply store and see if you can order those sheets of foam core so that's a great alternative between pipe and drape and hard walls. Now I prefer hold card walls because it's so much easier to hang things but I also think because it gives your booth a more professional field some shows you can either get hard walls or have them installed. So in my section in new york gift hard walls are part of my package. Okay? So when I show up in a show, this is exactly that suitcase isn't there a rule that in but this is what it looks like the walls are set up, my crate is there and ready to go so I come in and I just paint these walls have you guys an insider tip that it took me a long time to learn all these walls have seams sometimes they're giant seems because the guys don't put in together so great you want a piece of painter's tape down there before you paint your wall no seem uh so you know you have this you come in you paint it's good to go some shows the standard is pipe and drape and you don't want to pay for the showed install walls because it's really expensive that's a case where I bring my own walls so you can absolutely bring and set up your own hard walls checking with the show's union regulations first right so it isn't something that I do I do not ship the wall's going to be clear about that they go in the back of my husband's pickup truck uh now talking about how to build hard walls is outside the scope of what we can cover but if you go to my website so if you go to designing an mba dot com slash trade dash show dot dash I came say trade show hard walls you guys can all see it uh I actually put together a video that talks about how I built these walls it's free just jump on there you can watch it that way and so if you have any questions about how to build hard walls head over there and we'll take a look at that but right now stay here watch that later all right? So that's the pipe and drape versus hard walls with our nice little foam core kind of in the middle solution alright, so let's talk about where can you get furniture and fixtures for your booth so we remember we're thinking about this idea we want an overall aesthetic and some pieces that then we can use and adapt to different spaces okay, so the number one source for trade show furniture I kia it is without doubt the easiest place to get trade show furniture and it's something that you know I can walk a straight line like a kia kia kia but there's a reason it's really easy it's inexpensive it packs flat a lot of times people if you're flying to a show they will opt to go to ikea, purchase furniture and set it up because it ends up being cheaper than the show's rental now thankfully, almost every show you can get people come around and they'll take donations of the furniture that you're not bringing back with you and they'll take them to a shelter or some place that needs them so you could do that without feeling like you're being super wasteful so I ke is absolutely an option and as we all know you can also hack your eye kia products so in my booth this is a nike a table that I stained white it actually was free because it was terrorist desk and she was moving so you you khun thrift some stuff to on then my shelves are also I ke a that I stained the white to match my wood you can also use folding tables but you want to be careful about how you do it I'm not a fan of folding table with drape fabric because again it doesn't really tell you it doesn't really tell a store how it's gonna look right no stories draping fabric in there in there on their tables on so this is a case where you can use these but you made me want to be a little smarter about it now if you're going to use folding tables I love these because they are adjustable height there fantastic you want amazon they'd just in height you can go a little taller which is great so you can see here my friend megan reilly actually used them in a really simple booth she just put a little piece of fabric over them and she got so many compliments of having people like it's so nice and clean industrial she was like I really did nothing so sometimes you don't have to go crazy but if you have a great brand and some great pieces this is a perfect example of it. It works for her products that works for her brand and it worked for that particular show so you don't have to be crazy here uh the other thing that I will say about fooling tables with fabric is that technically any fabric fabric you use in your booth it has to be flame retardant that includes your drape, sew, drape and anything you're putting on your tables now you can get a flame retardant spray at your fabric store, spray that down actually, one of the reasons that I use hard walls and would things I'm sorry, but it's wood, this is like fight it's literally like kindle a but that doesn't after you fire retarded so it actually saves a lot of headache. Uh, you can see here how I actually use those same tables, but I'm carrying out the same idea. We're now I've got these wood table tops that fit on top and you can actually see what it looks like here they're three sides and they just sit right down on top of my folding tables. S o this is actually what I call like my drive to a show booth, hard walls, tables that fold down, they go in the back of the pickup truck. Yeah, super super easy and these air pieces these tables with the tabletops are pieces that I will also sometimes used at a retail show. So that's a perfect fixture that actually does double duty for me. But most of the time, what I am doing is I'm using bigger pieces of furniture that I've built myself now we talked about some people are lucky with graphic designer husbands, I'm really lucky with a handy build her husband s o I will say that my husband does build everything I'm pretty sure he paid him enough money he would build it for you too I don't know what that is, but I'm sure we could work something out um but this is a case where you know you could go out maybe trade time with a sculpture construction guy find someone who can build some stuff for you but all I did was you know, I told my husband this is what I want please build this I gave him the specs he did it but what's great about this is that it doubles as my shipping crate, so everything in my booth goes inside this piece of furniture when I get there, I unpack it and it's ready to go. The advantage of this isn't a show like new york gift if you just ship a crate that doesn't stay in your booth, they take it away at the end they take it away before the show starts right? And then you have to wait for somebody to bring it back at the end of the show at a big show like new york gift that could take six hours I don't know about you, but at the end of a four or five days show I don't only in six hours for my crate, so this is already there I just re packet I wrap it up and I'm out of there within an hour on the bus headed home so that's why I do this that's why this is so kind of critical because it takes so much stress out of it for me and again if you want to drive stuff dr stuff design your booth so you can drive it this is totally driveable when I'm doing closer shows or shows that one of charge me a million dollars in dredge you know this is when I'm using that booth, right? But when I'm going to new york for sure I'm shipping that crate and it becomes my piece of furniture now have since shifted from this one big crate to something that actually resembles what we've got here because this goes back to our idea that I want to be able to adapt my furniture to the size and the flow of my booth so this is these crates started his black crates you can see here I have like kind of this funny corner space so I put them that way and most iterations of my booth they now look pretty much like this they hang out, they make corner really helps grab grab attention and then you can see from here how my display pictures kind of all travel with me and they stay consistent now in terms of the actual display pieces that you're using there are certainly places that sell, you know, retail display pictures that you could bring into your booth and use those, but my theory is if I am making and designing every aspect of my work, I'm not gonna put that on a commercially made fixture doesn't make sense to me, and I would encourage you guys to think about this is well, so if playing around this is a great place to sort of play with your creativity, what services can you use? What you know, kind of heights can you put in here? You can see even on my table top I'm varying the height, so I just use these kind of painted canvases started out something a little different, but these work for me now I've got these different heights. I'm playing with different I make all my earing racks, even these little display guys here they are, I built that myself there steal now I'm mel smith, so they're steel and I welded them and that's the heart of my wheelhouse. But the's air actually derived from old displays I used to use that were just cones of paper wrapped together, so it doesn't have to be a lot you can sit down and really play with those fixtures. And of course, if your product has like a really commercial look, I feel like you're you're saying something that's going to go to a fine jewelry store then you might use those commercial fixtures but you'll be creative. The other thing you can do is start going to those stores that you love that you want to be carried in again now their product don't come in with your product but go to those stores and look at the kinds of display fixtures that they're using so that you can recreate those in your own booth so the other thing I want to talk about is storage because storage in your trade show booth is super important now my aesthetic for my show booth is, you know, clean and modern, right? Uh that's not how I operate in real life I'm pretty messy so for me storage is super essential so I discharged in a couple of ways so one is I build extra walls in my booth so you can see this is my new york booth again and I've had them put this wall and that's a little further forward and this is a case where I sent them a floor plan and I said, can I have this extra wall and they put that in for me I did that in advance so now my my newer crates they have to go on a palette this like a little wooden guy back there, they have to win a pallet. They can't they're not self supporting like the old crate, so I've got this little two foot crawl space the pallets lives in my suitcase, our bags that we bring in at the beginning of the day the trash can because if you put the trash can, the show gives you a trash can and if you put it in the front corner of your booth, everybody puts their trash in it and it's so messy so I hide mine, but my crates themselves double a storage, they also double is place to put your feet when you're really tired so that the inside of those display crates and the other thing that I like to dio is something like this. Ah, little bit of secret storage for those things that you want on hand. So this is also a great way where I can play, you know, with some height so I might put some of these guys up here. I might put an earring stand up here, so give me a little more height on my display, but it also gives me ah place to store things in this case, I'm actually using it to store the workbook, but in a trade show, my phone goes in here, you know, business cards anything that I might need to shield customers at a show I've got my you know with my stapler and some pens they all get tucked under here my tea is hanging out on her here we got all kinds of stuff right? So this put all of this stuff in arm's reach for me but it keeps it out of the way like it doesn't clutter my booth and that's really important for me so when you're thinking about designing your booth think about how you can give yourself a little bit of storage. The other advantage of moving this wall up is that it makes my booth shallower it brings it up from the back wall so you guys can see here like we let our back wall here miles to go guys hey like now I'm over here obviously in a real trade show scenario not on a tv set we would move this up so I would want these to be you know, somewhere here so my walls are any time I can push them forward that extra storage is good but my primary motivator is always to control the flow of my booth. All right? So other pieces that you're going we're gonna come back to this booth flo thinks it's super important but I want to talk about those other critical pieces in your trade show booth so two big ones are lighting and flooring this is a great place to have a booth because we've got all this beautiful studio lighting in here right? But you guys want to make sure that you're getting enough lighting so one of the things that you want to check and see is does the show provide lighting or do you need to bring it yourself and if you need to bring it yourself do they put provide electricity or you have to pay extra for that so you want to check on all those things so you know what to expect the other thing with things like electricity typically you want to order those in advance because it's cheaper than if you wait to pay for them when you get to the show okay so always pay attention those deadlines god's going to save you that money and again were all about keeping those costs down yes that's a great question so typically flat feet you tell them like I know I went up to a certain amount of wattage grand it's flat and then you're going to go great so that's me that first piece and this is another case where you're in a roll into your hardware store and you're gonna find things that work really common scenario is getting track lighting cable tying it to your teo pipe and you might have pipe that comes standard most shows will also let you get other pieces like cross pieces and warn them across so that's super simple I showed you guys the clamp light scenario it's a really easy, really inexpensive one clamped to the top of your booth I kind of shoot the light directionally but you can see here sin actually shoots hers this sin from river dog prints uh she's going to shoot her straight down on her cards and it lights it up really well all right, so the other piece is flooring now I'm a big fan of leaving my floor bear because it works for my aesthetic but though I do really like this rug maybe a missile having this will come with me right now like room that's the knife that works in my color palette, so well uh, but if you're going first of all some shows don't allow you to leave your forebear so you want to find that out but you also want to ask the question if I'm not getting carpeting down or something down what's that floor look like so in new york this is my floor it's beautiful it's bare concrete if it's my aesthetic I didn't show recently where I didn't bring my flooring and it wasn't in the main convention center floor it was up in meeting rooms, so ask that question first it's really bad it's really bad way don't talk about that so was move right on little horrifying moment in my life I I almost went out and bought a rug and then everyone talked me out of there like that because I just for whatever reason I assume it's all concrete I'm a fan of concrete so you just make sure thought it would be out yeah carpet like that just double check always double check just in case uh the one thing that I do use when I have to put carpet down if I have to use a flooring absolutely I'll use the floor carpet squares because now while they do get kind of heavy, they stack into a nice kind of a neat little bundle eso floor is a company that makes carpet in squares instead of by the rule makes it really easy to dio probably the most popular trade show flooring that you'll see are these interconnecting foam pieces that look like forward and they come in lots of really, really beautiful colors and they are squishy and comfortable if you want to be welcoming and inviting the way to go amazon or anywhere else on the internet yeah, and they call it in they're connected phone yeah like I would say interlocking foam tiles and I would say tak faux wood in your search and that'll get you these because there's a lot that air that kind of ugly gray that you put under like the gym equipment in your basement right but these look like nice pretty floors the wallet man if I was ever going to use them, I might use the grey ones that look like they go under the chin with women in your in your basement so that's some options for flooring all right? And we are you talked about this idea of varying the height in our booth so hand height, eye level and above head and I'm really good at like hand height and eye level and I'm not always so good about over the head let me show you some examples of people who do it a little better than I do actually I didn't write once so you can see here I pulled some lifestyle photography so sometimes putting images of putting things above doesn't mean product right cause it's really out of reach like if I've got product here it's awkward right? But I can use that space if I'm going to use something like lifestyle imagery I am not a big user of photographs in a trade show booth I think that's something that some people do it works really well it's just not part of my aesthetic but this is a case where I was flying to california and I knew I had a lot of space to phil and I knew what was going to be really tall so I stuck those images up there and it did help to raise the height uh this is an image I took of my friend cats booth she is brilliant because that is two foot rule and top corner. I was actually walking around the show trying to find her, and I spotted her from halfway down the aisle because I saw that image I knew it was her lifestyle image there she is super brilliant, so make sure you consider all of those spaces when you are laying out your booth, so we have some questions coming in either online or from the audience. Well online as they come in, you are just knocking him out before they have a chance to be asked so that's good fans because my mother used to be in the jewelry jesus many many is going to get a lot of trade shows, she used to get a lot of stuff stolen trade shows does that happen to you? That is a fantastic question I'm so glad you asked actually yes, so shocking no, it has never happened to me not going so first of all, one of the nice things about a trade show is that it is it tends to be a little more low key than if you're doing a retail show, so I do almost all my trade shows alone I've started to have my sister coming more she's super awesome, she helps me out a lot, I should acknowledge her in case she's watching. Thanks, melissa. Um, but for a long time, and often at least half of the trade show, I'm there by myself and trade shows a relaxing enough that I can go to my neighborhood, you know, I have to run to the bathroom, and you just go and you come back and it's fine, so you can absolutely do a trade show by yourself where things tend to walk away is at the end of the night when the show ends, so some people actually go to the front of the booth and, you know, put up netting, put up a tarp, put up something for me that doesn't work, plus myself is a little easier. So at the end of the night, I do this, I'd pile it all up and it goes in the crate and I put it away, so I've never had anything stolen. It takes me five more minutes to set up in the morning, but it's not a problem, actually, one of the things that you do have to be slightly careful of with product walking out at night is actually like technology. Sometimes product is not look at stolen, put like a smartphone might walk away so that's, why I love this secret storage, because anything that's valuable like if someone comes by and grabs something, you're not gonna notice. But if they're rooting around in the back of your storage, trying to steal your cellphone, you're gonna notice that.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Sample Order Form and Wholesale Terms
Trade Show List By Month
Trade Show Packing List
Private Facebook Group Access
Store Prospect List
Workbook
Syllabus

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

This is the first course I have bought. That's how valuable it is! I have a wish list of courses I dream of owning, but alas I'm on a 'starving' artist budget. I wish I had more time to watch all the free courses on CREATIVELIVE. I WISH I could 'save' a once for free watch time. they aren't 'conveniently' timed. And there are reasons I don't buy w/o seeing what the course entails vs. cost etc. I might buy more if I was able to do such. There are so many I am interested in but time constraints for watching it or catching a re-run are really prohibitive. I won't buy 'blind' and funds are limited. So I must be selective in choosing what to buy. It has to fulfill multiple requirements for me personally. Perhaps others have this dilema and CL could work on that. Or hey, maybe everyone just has more $ than they know what to do with. That said I am astonished that there are only 2 reviews that are lukewarm at best. This course crosses over so many platforms that whether or not I am ever intending to sell to retailers (which I have zero interest in) it is jammed so heavy with idea's and info on how to expand your mind and creative thinking processes that it's inspired me into action!!! My brain is on fire. Thank you Megan! I'd shave my head to own everything that Sue Bryce has taught. Megan is in that league of sharing insider info that is impossible to put a price on! I was only able to listen to a small percentage of Megan's free class, but it was enough to know that it was pure GOLD! Such Inspirational and visionary idea's are dense in this course. I also have sitting next to me two bags of coffee from one audience member! I think Creativelive is the #1 most amazing source I could ever hope to find and I still can't get over the steller excellence of the team that runs this. I live 4 hrs from Seattle (on a good day) and crave to be in an audience...but I love watching from my forest hideaway! The glitchiness in streaming during this course was annoying. I have broadband and multiple browsers to avail upon but there's something afoul in the air possibly because each browser had issues. Either audio was not working or visual was not working. I had to open 2 browsers. One for hearing and one for seeing. I hear from other brick and morters that make me think it is/was statewide. I will put the blame on Century Link because that was the common denominator. I'm following through on that one. They have been quirky ever since they took over Qwest. I'll end with major kudo's for the fantastic offerings that CREATIVELIVE has given to creative's everywhere! My life was changed when I stumbled on this tremendous opportunity. I am so forever grateful!

user fb434d
 

This is the perfect class for me! Was looking for this kind of information about doing trade shows and getting in to retail stores and found driblets of info here and there online. But, this is the whole deal and real deal. I think Megan is an AWESOME teacher and find her so easy to connect with. I love that she is funny and engaging and she clearly cares about the studio audience. She's a talented metalsmith and talented teacher. The information she gives in this course is so so so valuable. I feel like after going through this course and having it as reference I will be so ready and confident with taking my jewelry business to the next level. She makes it so approachable and breaks everything down. Thank you Megan!!

Ronda
 

Absolutely fantastic! Meg's course was one of, if not THE, most comprehensive and educational pieces I've seen in a long time. The knowledge she shared was dead on, inspiring and very, very generous and gracious of her. Meg presented the materials very well and the added bonuses were...well, just awesome! I've followed her blog for a long time and now I'm a fan of her classes. I'll be taking/buying more! Thank you SO much, Meg and Creative Live! 10 out of 5 stars for this class! - Ronda

Student Work

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