Manual Dispute

Any trade show manager will tell you how important it is to read the show manual for each trade show you’re attending. But after a recent experience, I’d add: Make sure you also read the latest version.

Things had gone smoothly during my first trip to Washington, DC, for the Food Safety and Security Summit in 2007. The booth arrived on time and intact. Setup was a breeze, and teardown was uneventful.

At show close, my freight company was due to pick up the booth from the venue before the 7:30 p.m. deadline indicated in the printed show manual. Then, my booth would travel from Washington, DC, back to our exhibit house in San Antonio, and out to our next show in Palm Springs, CA.

But when my driver checked in at the convention center just before 7:30 p.m., my boxed-up booth wasn’t there. Confused, he asked around and was told that the driver check-in deadline had, in fact, been 5:30 p.m. Making matters worse, no one could tell him for sure if my freight had been forced or if it had just been loaded on the wrong truck.

My driver quickly called my cell phone and left a message, which I got as I changed planes on my trip back to San Antonio. But with no time to handle the problem immediately, and no one I could call when I arrived home late that night, I had to spend a sleepless night wondering where my booth might be.

The next morning, I called the show-services provider and asked the reps to find my booth. I told them my driver had arrived before 7:30 p.m., and my crates weren’t there. After some quick checking, a rep told me my booth was now on its way to a warehouse in New York, and that this problem was my own fault because my driver had arrived after the 5:30 p.m. deadline, which he told me was spelled out clearly in the show manual on the Web site. He said that he would be happy to ship my booth to San Antonio for me, but I would have to pay for the added costs, which would be a significant increase from what I planned to pay my own freight company.

What’s more, the additional time this issue ate up meant that in order for the booth to arrive in California on time, I had to send it directly to Palm Springs, rather than back to San Antonio.

While I was relieved to have found my booth, I was determined not to pay the show-services provider for something I viewed as its mistake. After all, I had read the 7:30 p.m. check-in deadline in black and white. So rather than simply ante up the extra funds, I decided to fight it out.

When I got back to my office, I quickly pulled up the online show manual, where it clearly stated that drivers needed to check in before 5:30 p.m. However, I knew I’d seen the 7:30 p.m. deadline in print. Pulling out my printed show manual, I immediately found it — clear as day it said the deadline was 7:30 p.m. But even after I copied and faxed the printed version to the show-services provider, company representatives still didn’t want to budge.

As a last resort, I contacted show management and asked them to help me make my case. They listened carefully to both sides — and my plea about how I needed to resolve this quickly to get my booth to the next show. Finally, we all agreed that the show-services provider would ship my exhibit directly to Palm Springs at the price I otherwise would have paid my original shipper, plus an additional $200.

In the end, I learned that printed show manuals are nice, but online manuals are always the most accurate. And, when in doubt, always double check the check-out time.

— Terri Pease, marketing manager, Food Safety Net Services Ltd., San Antonio, TX




Eastern Blocked

Because engineers like to see real working gizmos, a key component of my company’s trade show exhibit is a rather expensive model of one of our core products. But when that item got lost in Eastern Europe, I needed to find a replacement, or face a hall full of eager engineers with nothing to show them.

In the summer of 2007, I got a call from one of our sales agents in Eastern Europe. He planned to attend a gas-industry show and wanted to borrow a model we use in our U.S. booths to sell our turbo gas expander (TGE), a vital component in gas processing. The model, a sliced open, 250-pound replica of our half-ton TGE, is more than just a prop in the booth: It’s a demonstration tool as well as a traffic stopper. And while this custom-designed replica with moving parts was expensive to manufacture, if it were damaged or stolen, it would cost much less to replace than an actual TGE.

While leery of losing the model, I also knew how important this sales agent is to our business. Thus, I agreed to send him the TGE model if he returned it by Aug. 1, so I would have it for the 2007 Turbo Machinery Symposium in Houston.

So he arranged to have it shipped to him from the Port of Los Angeles. As my valuable model made its trek to Europe, I routinely checked its progress until it arrived safely in time for the agent’s June show.

With my own show approaching, I put thoughts of the model on the back burner. But as the days to show opening dwindled away, I got a call from the European agent saying there was a problem shipping my TGE replica back to Houston.

When my rep shipped the item overseas, he listed it for import only, not import and export. While my agent was working to fix the paperwork, we soon determined that even if the snafu cleared up immediately, there wouldn’t be enough time for the model to make its way to Houston for my show.

With no model to show, I convened a meeting of colleagues to see if anyone had a solution. After a bit of brainstorming, my vice president of engineering asked why we didn’t use one of our actual TGEs just this once.

I quickly looked into his suggestion, and as luck would have it, we had one on hand ready to be shipped to a client after the show. Luck struck again, as the client agreed to allow us to install its expander in our booth. Granted, it didn’t have the model’s cut-away casing, allowing attendees to look inside our machines, but because it was full size, it certainly looked impressive in our booth.

After the show, the model finally returned from Eastern Europe safe and sound, but the next time our European agent asks to borrow something, I think I’ll fill out the paperwork myself.

— Susan C. Price, marketing manager, Mafi-Trench Co. LLC, Santa Maria, CA