Walk the Line
Getting exhibits through Canadian customs is always cause for concern. But when I shipped my tabletop to a recent Canadian show, clearing customs turned out to be the easiest part of the process. The hard part was crossing the picket lines.

As trade show coordinator for Boston-based Tekscan Inc., I’ve learned to send all of my Canada-bound shipments extra early to provide plenty of time to clear customs. Thus, I shipped my exhibit two weeks before the Ontario Podiatric Medical Association Scientific Conference in October 2007.

Having shipped via UPS, I checked regularly on the progress of my packages, and was delighted when they cleared Canadian customs more than a week before the show. With a long Columbus Day weekend coming up, I was happy to know the parcels were headed for the hotel show site and would be awaiting my sales rep when he arrived in Toronto.

But when I made one last check before leaving for the weekend, I discovered the packages had not been delivered. The reason, according to the UPS tracking site, was: receivers on strike, no delivery. Those five words put me in a panic. Was the whole hotel on strike? Would the show even happen?

Quickly, I called the hotel’s conference planner and learned that the conference was unaffected, though roughly half a dozen hotel employees were picketing the hotel over a wage dispute. Unfortunately, as UPS was a union company, the delivery driver refused to take my shipment across the picket line.

Since my sales rep in charge of the booth was also staying in the same hotel, I didn’t have an alternate shipping address, and my parcel was now stuck in UPS limbo. With a blockade of picket signs in the way, I worried whether I’d ever get my scab booth past the strikers.

With mere hours before the three-day Columbus Day weekend and with the show date looming, I quickly called UPS, which informed me that my parcels were in its warehouse 25 miles away. Unfortunately, my sales rep had no plans to rent a car in Toronto, and hiring a cab to traipse around the city looking for the warehouse seemed like an impractical solution. I needed to get my shipment closer to his hotel.

Finally, my rep suggested UPS could send the packages to a store near the hotel. So I quickly rerouted the delivery to a UPS store a couple of blocks from the hotel so he could swing by and pick it up.

Satisfied we’d solved the problem, I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend. But upon my return, I discovered my shipment was still at the warehouse. Thus, I had to make another call to get the materials moved to the UPS store. I also realized that with the picketing still going on, my exhibit could not be picked up from the hotel when the show was over. Again, a few phone calls found a UPS store open on Saturdays so my sales rep could deliver the exhibit to the store and ship it to the next show.

Through it all, I realized that finding a backup plan is never for the problems you see coming, it’s for the ones that strike when you least expect them.

— Lisa Chin, trade show coordinator, Tekscan Inc., Boston