03.21.08
Don’t Mess With Mama Nature!
…or…Out of Control, Snowballing Chaos
Here you see one table with soap samples, our “The Soap Doctor Is In” sign and a pretty fountain in the background.
Let me apologize up front. I’ll keep this post as short as possible, but I’d advise readers to settle in with a good cup of coffee or hot chocolate. I hardly believe this story myself!
It all started the evening before we were leaving for the Kentucky Crafted trade show in Louisville. Most everything was in boxes, crates and packing containers and just needed to be carted down the 25 stairs and packed in the truck. Debra and I had pretty much loaded up her vehicle when I came tripping down the staircase with another load of soap.
“Tripping” is the operative word I guess, because by the time I got to the very bottom, tiny step, that’s exactly what I did. I went sprawling, soap everywhere on the street, and me flat on my back staring up at the sky and mentally crying, “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” It didn’t seem to help though. By the time I got out of the emergency room that evening, I had a set of xrays showing a fracture in my right leg, a sprain in the left, a pair of crutches, a splint, a bunch of bandages and orders to call the orthopedist in the morning.
That’s me, splint and bandages, before the cast.
When you’re not sure what to do, just do something
Well, sometimes when you don’t know what to do, it’s easiest to just go ahead and do what you had planned on doing in the first place. Debra and I decided that rather than wait until the next morning, we’d head over to Louisville that evening and get a jump on things in the morning. She added a tiny wheelchair her daughter had used in the past to our load, and away we went, with me trying to replay the situation in my mind hoping for a different ending. That didn’t seem to help either.
The next day we managed to get our booth built, or rather, Debra did. She went way above and beyond all rules of friendship by doing all the dragging, lifting, tugging and building herself while I looked for things I could do to be helpful. I definitely found out you can fall out of a wheelchair if you lean too far forward. And I also learned that crutches are really a death trap in disguise. Nevertheless, as the day went on, our booth began shaping up nicely.
Debra hanging a poster. How do you thank a friend like this?
I did my best to be useful!
This year’s new look
Remember from the last post I said I intended to do a new look this year with black curtains, posters and some elements from last year’s booth for continuity. It turned out the stuff from last year’s booth didn’t even get packed…and in fact, there were other things that got left behind in all the hubbub. But I had made black curtains and tablecloths, and we did have our favorite fountain from last year.
Everything was experimentation and trial-and-error, and we just kept at it until the booth began to emerge. My little “The Soap Doctor Is In” sign went in the middle, and both Debra and I had our lab coats with “The Soap Doctor” appliqueed on the pockets. The new Ultimate line went in the middle on its own shelf, and the other soaps got grouped where appropriate. We had a shelf for lavenders, one for “man soaps” and then another shelf with samples of each soap. We tried to spread out the product so a number of people could shop at the same time in the 10×10 ft. space.
“The Soap Doctor” in a wheelchair…any contradictions here?
At the end, I thought it just looked too plain. I wanted to put something on that big black backdrop. But Debra kept telling me that simple was better, and as the weekend went on I got more used to it. There was a definite elegance to the booth that I liked. I have to say, though, that black tablecloths are really hard. Every fleck of soap not only stuck but showed up. Wipe them away and you got big streaks. That’s a problem for next year.
We’re almost ready!
Ready for business
Finally, by Thursday afternoon, our booth was built and we were ready for business. Luckily I had prepared lots of specific literature and had things organized before deciding to crash down the staircase. It was a pretty slow afternoon, dedicated to wholesale sales, but that was expected. Finally, we headed back to the restaurant and a good meal complete with margarita, to the hotel and a much better night’s sleep.
Friday dawned on another wholesale day, which also went as expected with a few sales and a lot of interested buyers. I had prepared buyer’s packets complete with samples of literature, price lists, business cards, etc. to hand out. Buyers are moving fast and they appreciate your being very prepared.
Chaos on top of disaster
Sometime about noon on Friday rumors began to spread through the convention center about an impending “blizzard of the century” which, according to convention fear-mongers, was bearing down on Louisville and was ready to eat us all alive. I figured I’d had enough of disaster for one weekend and decided to ignore them all, but stories kept growing. By the time we left the convention center that evening, snow was indeed falling hard enough to look serious. We headed back to our now-favorite restaurant, another good meal and another margarita!
Sure enough, by morning the entire town was shut down…except the Kentucky Crafted show at the convention center. Here we had hundreds of exhibitors who, at great expense, had carted their art across the state, invested in booth space and equipment, and could not exactly wait until the next weekend. These shows are scheduled a year in advance. There would not be a re-do. But outside, expressways and highways were almost unrecognizable. The blizzard was in full force. Those of us on the roads at all just crawled along and prayed.
For this show, Saturday and Sunday are the retail days, and that’s when most of us hope to at least break even on the show costs. However, this Saturday, police were telling everyone to stay home, and they did. We had a convention center pretty full of vendors talking to each other, and that was the extent of the business for that day.
By Sunday a few people ventu red out, but the hoped-for surge to make up for Saturday never occurred. It was a relatively slow day, but there were some modest sales. And for me, after four days of limping around on crutches and in a wheelchair (you wouldn’t believe how slow and tiring it is to move around that way unless you’ve done it!), I was really looking forward to seeing if I could find my own bed at home and just stay there a while.
Well, I won’t bore anyone further with tales of how I got all this stuff back UP the stairs and at least tried to put things away, make soap to fill orders from the show and get back to work. Let’s just say it’s an ongoing struggle and leave it at that. I have a lot of very fine friends who have made my existence much easier. In the meantime I got a Kentucky Wildcats Blue cast and am now hobbling around in a “moon boot.” I’m supposed to stay off the leg for another few weeks and then begin to slowly put weight on it, but I don’t get out of the moon boot for another four weeks.
Conclusion
I promised I’d let you know what I thought of the black background and other props. Basically, it’s a thumbs-up. I thought it added an elegance I liked. But I will rethink the design slightly for next year. It needs a few extra touches. I’d like a small table to do some demonstrating and possibly an “anna’s” sign that would be remembered by customers. I’ll adjust some of the literature and signage, but overall it worked well. And the posters with the pretty green leaves added another good touch I think.
The trade show was a financial disaster this year, perhaps less for me than for many. But my perception is that disasters just do happen once in a while, and you must simply write them off and learn what you can. In my mind, this weekend had enough disasters so that if the law of averages balances things out, I should be good to go for a while!
Sharon
Another treat…a trade show “neighbor” who does these amazing sculptures had forgotten the shovel for his miner. He bought a cake of cinnamon clove soap and carved a temporary shovel for his miner. The shovel you see here is actually made of soap!