Tradeshows

Many people ask what I do and I try to explain it to them. Most people just nod and say, ohhh sounds like fun and very interesting. Not sure they really understand the whole aspect of my job. I had a show in Ocean City Maryland this past week and decided to get some pictures to show everyone exactly what it looks like.

A brief summary - I have been working for Urban Expositions for 5 years now. Urban owns, manages and produces over 20 tradeshows a year in the beach, resort and gift industry. We have a sales team that sells the booth spaces to manufactures (exhibitors) and then there is a buyer relations department who calls the retailers/stores (buyers) to attend the show. There is also an administration group who handle paper work, data entry, mailers, emails/faxes, invoicing, lots of communication with exhibitors once the booths have been sold, etc etc. It takes a whole year to plan these events. Most of them are in convention centers that we rent out for the show all over the US. Check us out on the web, www.urban-expo.com. I am a show coordinator (admin) for 5 shows which means I travel about 5-6 weeks out of the year. We usually fly in a day before move in. Move in for the exhibitors last 2 days and we have a decorating company that sets up the booths for us and handles incoming freight and helps us with any problems during set-up. The shows are either 3 or 4 days long and then one day of move out on the last day of the show. So we are usually out of town for 7-8 days for each of these shows. It is very exhausting as we are on our feet, most of the time, and our days can start as early as 5:30 and sometimes don't end until late at night.

The show in Ocean City has a great show office location where I can look down on one of the halls so I was able to get some great pictures of Hall A/B. We had another room with about 60 booths as well. This is one of our smaller beach/resort show.

 This was during move in, freight in the aisle's, booths still needing to be constructed, long 2 days

 Aisle carpet has been laid.

 Our shows entail a LOT of marketing. We have a marketing company that handles all of this for us and luckily they are located in the same office as us. They also travel to some of our smaller shows and handle our registration.

 This was the entrance to the Ballroom Exhibits

 We did have a decent view out on the Bay side

 Exhibitors are beginning to move in

 Some exhibitors provide us with 200 product samples for us to fill goody bags and give out on the first 2 days to the buyers at the show.

 Looking good and getting ready for opening day

4 day show and now its time to break down. The one thing I will always be amazed at is that these exhibitors spend 2 days setting up and getting everything perfect, but can then tear down and pack it all up in less than 5-6 hours. Then get on the road and do it all over again at another show.




So hopefully this gives you a better idea at what I do all year and what I do on the road. My next trip is Orlando, FL in January. There are definitely some advantages of these shows - shopping!! I can pick up a lot of great Christmas and wedding gifts at wholesale prices or better!!