Our trip to Atlanta for the 2009 Georgia Expo started on the birthday of my travel companion (my aunt, Dawn), so I ordered up a Georgia snowstorm for her:

We arrived at our hotel just after 3pm and immediately stood in front of the heater for a few minutes to de-frost. This is the view from our hotel, situated adjacent to Turner Field, where the Braves play:

After warming up and getting unpacked, we scooted off to scope out the expo location and enjoy a celebratory birthday dinner.
Driving in Atlanta is treacherous in sunny conditions (14 lanes of traffic, incomplete or missing directional signs, one-way streets), but finding our way through construction zones in the icy, freezing dark was an adventure.
We never did find out exactly how to get to the Georgia Freight Depot that night (I checked my email again and found the map the organizers sent me) but we did find the chosen restaurant, Pappasito’s Cantina (which we discovered last year and blogged about in the post KFDA 2008: Lunch in Atlanta).

We each ordered fajitas and the picture above is of the 4-person table they covered with our meal! As usual, the meal was totally wonderful and we were too full to even attempt dessert.
Move-in at the Freight Depot (host site of the Expo) was scheduled for 8:00 am Monday morning, with hearses and caskets going in first. That left less than 3.5 hours for the rest of us to set up and prepare for the wave of attendees.
Compounding my concern was the fact that Dawn is new to our company and has never set up our convention space, let alone sold a single cover before! So we set off early to find our way through downtown construction and get in line to load all our goodies into the exhibit hall.

We left our hotel room at 7:15 am and arrived at the location within 15 minutes. Load-in had started early and, to our surprise, the hearses and caskets had been loaded the day before, to keep them out of the snow and cold.
Even better than getting a jump on setting up, Dawn is good at puzzles and takes direction well. We had the metal shelving assembled within an hour and finished shelving covers and cleaning our area by 9:30.
After a quick breakfast at a Waffle House just a few blocks away, we changed clothes in the Expo restrooms and hit the floor just ahead of the funeral directors.
We recapped our Day 1 sales numbers in the post Almost All ULTRAs at the Georgia Expo. Our goal for the whole show was 20 covers, so selling 10 on the first day was a great relief. To celebrate, we went back to Pappasito’s, where we split a fajita platter (steak, chicken and rock lobster!) and shared a huge brownie dessert.

Day two started at 12:00 noon and saw even more funeral directors show up. The session was scheduled to end with a special legislative reception, which provided time for funeral directors to chat with their elected officials and lobby them on important funeral-related issues.
As the day wound down (closing time was 4:30 pm) and we watched other exhibitors tearing down their booths 30 to 45 minutes early (a real shame) we kept pushing for the last few sales that would put us over our goal.
Dawn sold cover #22 while we were breaking down our booth at 4:50 pm. One of the funeral directors who purchased a cover earlier in the day dodged the exiting hearses and fleeing casket sellers to add another cover to his order.
We’d exceeded our goal and, with snow still on the ground, were ready to pack the car and head back to Florida.

Dawn helped me implement a cool packing trick that I brainstormed before we left; we packed the two large towers of shelves full of covers and removed the large bridge shelves.

Then, we wrapped each one with cling film (Saran wrap) and loaded them into the car. Our sign and the cot we borrowed from my friends at our local funeral home, Harden-Pauli, fit sideways next to the shelves.
We stopped for a quick bite at a Zaxby’s Restaurant in Perry, GA and were home by 12:35 am.
In all, the event was a very positive experience for our growing company. We made some good contacts, signed three regional funeral supply companies to resell our product and got our cot covers into the removal vehicles of 20+ more funeral homes. And it only took three days and less than $1200. Here’s the breakdown:
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Booth
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$ 550
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Fuel
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$ 110
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|
Hotel
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$ 248
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|
Food
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$ 165
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|
Brochures
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$ 50
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Miscellaneous
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$ 50
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TOTAL
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$ 1173
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And while I haven’t figured out the exact sales figures for the show, I’ve estimated we wrote at least $5000 in orders.