I really, really, really meant to write about our Boston plans in advance.  So that you, my readers, could “follow along” as the convention took place.

Isn’t there something about “the best laid plans…” that can explain away the difficulties I faced trying to write before I left?

So here’s my attempt to recap the events of the convention and make up for my earlier inattention.

We left for Boston on a Saturday, two full days before the expo was scheduled to start.  If you remember my previous posts about convention setup, you’ll know that I like to get to a show in plenty of time for something to go wrong without it destroying the show.  That means having enough time to deal with snafus or issues that may arise.

 Before the show, I had to decide how we were going to ship our booth and display merchandise to the show.  If I put it on a pallet and shipped everything, I’d pay several hundred dollars for shipping, at least another hundred to have it forklifted from the marshaling yard to the convention floor.  Then I’d have to repack everything and pay to have it sent back through to get home.

So I called up a friend, BT Hathaway of the blog Funeral Words, and asked him if he knew any funeral directors in Boston who’d be willing to receive a few boxes on my behalf.  Within 5 minutes, he emailed me a name and number and I got in touch with an awesome guy, Mike Flynn.

Mike agreed to accept boxes and store them in the funeral home garage.  Then he asked if I needed anything else.  I hesitantly shared that I needed to find a stretcher to borrow for the show.  I figured it was worth a shot to ask.  And he offered his!  And said he’d drive everything to the show!

When we arrived in Boston, I called Mike and told him we’d meet him at the convention center.  After a short cab ride from the airport, we checked in with the NFDA staff – they always do a great job and make registration pretty easy – and headed to our empty booth.

Mike met us a few minutes later, unloaded his truck and we set to work.

In less than two hours, we had our floor down, built a fake dressing table out of our shipping boxes, set up our chrome display rack (a $90 closet organizer that I ordered and shipped to Mike’s funeral home) and organized our cot covers.

By four o’clock, two days before the show, we were ready for the convention.  And ready to see Boston!

VIDEO INTERLUDE:  The Floor of the Convention, as seen from the 2nd floor entrance:

We spent Sunday exploring Boston and seeing many of the historic sites.  We visited a graveyard with stones dating back to 1661 and saw the Old North Church, where the lantern from “one if by land, two if by sea” started Paul Revere on his midnight ride.

Monday the convention started, so we hightailed it that morning to the floor and got ready for a bunch of orders.  Which, coincidentally, is the reason I haven’t been posting here so much; we’ve been swamped getting all these cot covers out the door. 

First day was awesome, with lots of people buying stuff on the convention floor.  We sold cot covers every single day, with some orders coming before the show officially opened, even.

We sold 45 covers the first day.  Second day saw 57 more sales.  The third day was shorter and only resulted in 12 sales, but that was enough to push us to 114 covers sold, 14 more than my crazy goal for the show.

What else?  Lots of people asked us about dressing table skirts, which means we really, really, really have to get those in the pipeline.  And many of our customers were excited to use their cover for unembalmed and identification viewings.

When the show ended, we knew we still had another day to enjoy Boston (we didn’t leave until Thursday morning while the show ended Wednesday at 1:00 pm) but there’s so much pressure to get out of the convention center.   Here’s a look at how a show closes:

An hour after the show closed and the carpet is gone from the aisles, hearses are already driving off the floor and our booth is almost completely dismantled.

See ya in New Orleans next year!

I’ve only got two more minutes on my time here at the Internet cafe – Thanks to my computer powercord dying – so here’s the quick update.

We sold over 100 cot covers.  Our way-crazy goal for this show was 100 and we’re at 114, if we count the two I just got from a guy who couldn’t make it back to our booth before the show closed.

We also shot some good video that I’ll share here and we took some cool pictures of the show floor.

We fly home tomorrow early, so I can get started on getting cot covers ready.

More tomorrow.

We arrived in Boston yesterday (Saturday, October 24th) just after 1:00 pm.  We took a taxi directly to the convention center and found our booth.

We had until 4:00 pm to work on the expo floor, so we started right away.

We laid out all four pieces of our recycled flooring and, using carpet tape, secured it to the concrete floor.  The flooring is made from scraps of our most popular cot cover fabric.  I originally made two 5′x10′ sections for the Ohio FDA show in May.  They worked great (and saved us money on carpet rental) so I made an additional section to fit our 10′x15′ booth for the Kentucky FDA Expo in June.

Since our NFDA booth is 10′x20′ again this year, I made another piece of flooring so we’d have four 5′x10′ sections.  They travel well – we fold them along the sewing lines and they stack great – and are easy to put down quickly.

We’ve gotten pretty quick with the rest of our setup, so putting up the rack, organizing our product and dressing the cot and table took less than 30 minutes.

The only major difference for this show is that we didn’t bring our fake dressing table, so we used the boxes that we shipped our product in to create the table.  I also ordered 25 extra boxes so we can ship product right from the show after the expo ends.

We were finished by 4:00 pm and here’s the result:

Reading back over my last post, Bringing More $$$ to NFDA Convention This Year, I realized that I started to talk about all the expenses that went up with this year’s show, but only talked about the hotels.

In fact, I started a paragraph with the sentence, “Consider first the hotel situation.”

And I never offered anything else to consider!

It’s been crazy around here lately, can’t you tell?

Truth is, most of the expenses are what people would normally pay.  It’s just that I was spoiled last year by having the show in my own backyard.  This year, I’ve got to figure out how to ship everything to Boston and fly myself there (got tickets now, thank goodness) and get around town with public transport and…

Just a lot to consider.  And spend money on.

I’ve made this early checklist to help me plan our booth at the 2009 NFDA Expo.

However, there are some other vendors out there who might find this useful, so I’m sharing it with my audience.

BOOTH DESIGN & SETUP

- Choose floor material and how to secure it
- Test booth elements, both setup, teardown and strength
- Unroll banners and look for any peeling, cracking, etc.
- Time setup and teardown

PRODUCT

- Calculate amount of product to take
- Weigh product for shipping requirements
- Prepare packing materials

PROMOTION

- Design or update convention fliers (I’ve got some from the last show that I like)
- Other handouts?  Want keychains or other crap to give away?
- Print bags for information and the odd “carryout” order.
- Print order forms

TRAVEL

- Hotel Reservations
- Flight Reservations
- Map Subway/Bus routes to hotel, convention center, airport
- Input info into www.TripIt.com so people can follow my movements
- Seek out some great restaurants in Boston

SHIPPING

- Get hands on a pallet
- Figure out how to strap stuff to a pallet
- Figure out how to wrap a pallet in cling film
- Get the pallet to a loading dock
- Arrange for pickup
- Cross fingers and hope the stuff makes it to Boston in one piece!

MISCELLANEOUS

- Find some stuff to write here so this list doesn’t look so short.

I know, there’s still over a month to plan, but there are a few things that I’ve put off that I should have done weeks ago.

I still haven’t reserved a hotel room.  Hopefully, there’s still one left!  I still haven’t decided how I’m getting to Boston.  Hope there’s still two seats available!

I’ve got to find a pallet to load up all our stuff for the show and ship it to Boston.  Speaking of pallets, I also have to figure out how to shrink wrap the thing!

This is going to be fun.

On the plus side, I think I’ve hit upon a “sustainable” booth design that we can make out of recyclable materials so I don’t have to repack the pallet at the end of the show and pay to have it shipped back to Florida.

Basically, we’re going to organize our booth out of cardboard.  the flooring will be made from scraps of our own fabrics, like we did for the Ohio and Kentucky shows.  Here’s a picture of what the floor looks like.

We’ll also take just one cot cover in each of our fabric patterns.  And any that are ordered at the show will be put into a cardboard box and shipped from the convention center at the end of the show.  I’m also having our signage made in fabric panels that can be attached to the cardboard structure and our “fake stretcher” will be the PVC one that we’ve used for the past several shows.  At the end of the show, we’ll recycle the parts that can be recycled and trash the rest of it.

The banners will get packed into boxes with the two best sections of the floor and shipped to back home via UPS or FedEx.  I don’t plan to take thousands of printed sheets, since the city is filled with Kinko’s that can print color brochures at a moment’s notice.  Besides, my experience in Orlando was that even when we were selling LOTS of covers, we still needed fewer than 1000 handouts.  I expect we’ll go through about 500 here.

Anything I’ve missed?  Seriously, tell me if I’m not thinking something through properly.  Time’s ticking, right?

Folks, I have been super-busy.  Between the uniform store (www.eliteuniformstore.com) and cot covers (www.cotcovers.com), I’ve had my hands full.

And now I remember that the 2009 NFDA Convention is less than two months away!  ARGH!!!! So much still to do.

The first convention I attended was in Las Vegas, but I had family there, so I was able to ship my product and fly out to meet it. 

The last convention was in Orlando, which meant a 1 hour ride, carrying the product and shelving units in the back of the truck.

But this year, it’s in Boston and I’ve got to send my products and display in a crate or on a pallet via common carrier.  Boy, am I nervous about that plan!

For the most part, I’m worried about getting everything there in one piece.  I’m also concerned about the cost.  I’m notoriously frugal, so I hate to shell out extra bucks for something that has never cost me a lot of money.  Oh, and I’m still worried about what happens if my stuff doesn’t arrive.

Add to it the stress of opening a retail store (www.eliteuniformstore.com) and you can imagine my current frustrations. 

So I’m going to call the hotel tomorrow to make the reservation.  And I’ll book our flights.  And I’ll try to figure out the best way to load a pallet and wrap it so that everything stays safe.  Anyone got pointers?

And I’ll be back here in the next few days to, hopefully, announce a great benefit for exhibitors at the 2009 NFDA Convention.  Hint?  It involves some high-profile publicity through NFDA and some interaction with me!

Can’t wait, can you?

I had a great question from an urn maker who will be exhibiting at the NFDA Convention for the first time this October.

Artist David Orth asks:

How many brochures do you think I ought to print for an event like this?  I’m thinking 2000, is that overkill?  Underkill (is that even a word?)?

When I attended my first NFDA show, I printed 2500 brochures and came back with more than 2000 of them.  Truth is, even if you hand a brochure to everyone willing to take one, while you ignore the real, meaningful conversations you could be having with people who want to go “in-depth,” you will still probably only give out 1000 pieces.

The NFDA show is not the place for you to get your product in front of every single person in the funeral industry.  Heck, it’s not even the right place to get it in front of everyone who attends! 

Too often, exhibitors assume that everyone who attends will pass by their booth.  They also incorrectly assume that everyone who passes by their booth will be willing to take a brochure.  And, this assumption kinda hinges on everyone who attends the show being attentive and connected to a funeral home in some meaningful way.

First, you need to remember that many of the people who attend the show are there on vacation with their loved one who does happen to be a funeral professional.  Lotsa kids come to these shows.  And by kids, I also mean teenagers and young adults who may be in mortuary school, but are unfamiliar with how to walk a trade show floor and interact.

Frankly, the kinda company that Mr. Orth runs, making unique and expensive art urns, doesn’t need 2000 clients.  I imagine that he would have difficulty making 2000 urns in a year, considering the beautiful furniture and art he makes in his primary line.

So Orth needs to find only a few takers amongst the thousands who will attend the show.  He needs to get his brochures into funeral directors’ hands, but there’s less urgency for him to “close a sale” at the show.  I imagine that most of the business he generates at the NFDA show will come from funeral directors who take his literature home and show it off to people in their community.

I’d say take 1,000 brochures and make sure they’re directed at the consumer.  Don’t put your wholesale pricing on them and don’t make them time-sensitive.  That way, a funeral director who finds the tri-fold a year later and shows it to a family doesn’t have to worry about “2009 pricing!” staring back at them.

He goes on to ask about dress code, which I addressed in the previous post.

This is as good a time as any to talk about one major mistake I see funeral industry exhibitors making:  wearing inappropriate clothing.

For my small company, the only appropriate clothing is a dark suit with conservative tie.  Why do we wear this?  Because we’re selling a product used during home and hospital removals, when funeral homes pay special attention to how their staff dresses and acts.

If I look like I could go on a removal at a moment’s notice, it allows them to visualize the cot cover in it’s natural, if unpleasant setting: during the transfer of remains into a funeral home’s care.

Of course, there are areas of funeral service where a more casual appearance might be appropriate.  Someone selling retorts (crematory machinery) might want to wear something industrial, like a jumpsuit.  Folks peddling chemicals often wear embriodered shirts with the company logo.

Still, wearing a shirt unbottoned to the navel and spiking your hair might tell a visitor to CES (Consumer Electronics Show) that you are hip and involved with the latest technology, but all it does to funeral convention attendees is turn them off.

I watched last year as my friends from Eternal Space, a now-defunct company, tried to wow attendees with their tech-forward Internet memorial concept, and wondered how much more comfortable their visitors would have been if the presenters had looked more like them.

Does long hair and funky purple leather European loafers help impress funeral directors?  Hardly.

Keep it simple and dignified.

I just heard from my friend Jan from the Independent Funeral Directors of Florida; I’ve been booked to give two presentations!

First, I’ll give an updated version of the talk I presented at the OGR Conference in Key West last year.  The discussion centers around both “Good, Better, Best” marketing and how to merchandise the public areas of funeral homes.

Then, I’ll help funeral directors understand the new social media (MySpace, Facebook, blogs, etc.) with a 50-minute discussion of how to use the Internet to connect with client families.

The 2009 IFDF Convention and Expo will be held June 11-14th at the Renaissance Resort World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Florida.

Also, IFDF published their newsletter this month.  Check it out.

Last December, I shared my excitement about the 2008 NFDA Convention prospectus that had arrived in the mail.  In the post, 2008 NFDA Convention Prospectus, I talked about the changes to the show, including the inclusion of the general session stage and seating within the expo hall.

I observed that:

This means exhibitors will get more face time with important clients as they attend the main sessions, lunches and receptions. 

I also think this will encourage attendees to visit more booths and to revisit and spend more time with exhibitors they find especially interesting.

Now that the convention is over and we’re busy preparing for the 2009 schedule, I can look back at how well the convention fulfilled those expectations.

First, there definitely was more face time with clients, although I still think NFDA should trim some of the early morning hours when no one is walking the show floor (2008 NFDA Convention: What NFDA Should Fix).

The extended hours and inclusion of the general sessions on the floor actually helped the exhibitors, but possibly at the expense of the general sessions.  There weren’t as many people sitting in the assigned seats and paying undivided attention to the opening session as I expected.  On the plus side, more of them were talking to me and listening to the session in bits and pieces!

We also got a lot of repeat business, which didn’t happen in 2007 (bad booth location), with attendees stopping by our booth two and three times.  Many who had already ordered dragged their friends over to look at the product. 

More encouraging, we saw people walking the floor on subsequent days, meaning that the expo is no longer “that room you visit once during the show” but the center of the activities.

Now, if they could only figure out how to offer the CEU’s on the expo floor…