Strategy > Sales
Before I came on board, VersaMe, makers of early education technology, had brought on an expensive big box rep group with great credentials. Turned out they sucked for lots of reasons, but they managed to arrange a phone call with a buyer form Barnes & Noble while I was in California and so I took the call with co-founder and CFO, Nicki Boyd. We did our thing and at the end, the buyer was still on the fence when she asked, “Are you going to be at ABC next week?” “Of course we are,” I said. “I’ll get you the booth number later today.” She said, “Fine, I’ll come by your booth Friday afternoon at 2 to take a closer look at the Starling.” We hung up the phone and I looked at Nicki and said, “Guess what? We’re going to the ABC show.”
ABC SHOW: Mmmmmm. Vegas convention center. Soak it in.
Of course we had NO plans to go to ABC. Nicki didn’t even know what it was. But I did. ABC is the huge annual, baby gear trade show in Vegas for wholesale buyers big and small. I’ve done ABC multiple times in the past for Wrybaby. Booth space typically starts at around $5,000 for the three and a half day show. That doesn’t count your airfare, lodging, and food. Nor does it include what it costs to have a decent presence there. And if your product is a high-tech baby gadget, don’t even go if you’re only going to use what they supply you for $5K, $10K, or even $15k: plain industrial carpet; two folding chairs; dark blue fire-retardant curtains as your walls; a plastic trash can; and a white plastic sign hanging from the curtains with your company name and booth number printed in Helvetica Regular. No, you’ve got to either spend $$$$ or $$ and be clever. We had to do the latter. Because this was a one off show for us. Of course we wanted to be in a big box store, but at the time we were really trying to make a connection with consumers on our own. We weren’t focused on a wholesale strategy. So it was worth the gamble to go and make our Barnes & Noble meeting, but we’d also have the chance of meeting other relevant big box buyers (Target, Buy Buy Baby, etc.). Not to mention all the indie mom and pop buyers.
ABC SHOW: Welcome to the show. Here’s what you get for all that $$$! Now to paint some lips on this pig.
This post isn’t about booth design. Because our booth ended up being the least expensive version of what it would take to pass for looking like we had advanced tech to offer, that we knew what we were doing, and that we had done shows before. All were important bars to meet for any exhibitor. OK, I’ve gone this far, so I’ll give you some quick exhibitor tips for going on the cheap. Get a pop-up display to use as your back wall and get a snazzy, eye-catching graphic wrap made for it. After 8 years of doing big shows twice a year for Wrybaby, I had never used a pop-up (I always had those spaces custom built), but for VersaMe I used monsterdisplays.com. They were affordable, fast, and the quality was great. Still, that solution alone is pretty lame. You gotta spice it up with furniture. Don’t rent tables and chairs from the show. It’s expensive and they look like shit. Find an IKEA nearby and go buy the small tables and chairs you need there. Also, if you’re going to display a product, get some shelving there, too. Oh, and some accent rugs for color. Then get an Uber and take it all to the convention center and start building. In the end you’ll have something that’s somewhat unique, eye-catching (if you bought the right stuff) and a step or two above being a basic bitch. Your booth neighbors will also not hate you.
ABC SHOW: A quick Uber to IKEA and we’re in business. A table set in company colors (YAY IKEA) for our big Barnes & Noble meeting (and whoever else we’d be talking to)!
Anyhoo, we made it there. Our lodging was an AirBnB apartment in a dingy mixed-use building behind the convention center, whose retail anchor was a psychic. The dark halls smelled strongly of heavily seasoned fried foods. It was amazing. We got our goods at IKEA, built them all night, arrived for the first morning of the show...and waited.
We made contact with interesting folks big and small (a lot of ABC is meeting buyers, then closing sales after the show). We also got to practice the pitch, refining it here and there for everyone who stopped (and there were a lot). Finally, the moment of truth – our Barnes and Noble buyer arrived. We went through our pitch as she stood looking looked at the display we’d set up. The Starling was out of its box perched in front of a pyramid of the packaging behind it. As I talked, I saw she was looking hard at the packaging. She asked a lot of smart questions, and then things went quiet. She was still looking at the packaging when she said, “I feel like It’s not ready yet. Let’s stay in touch.” She thanked us and she was gone. We’d taken a chance and it didn’t pay off.
ABC SHOW: Here are some very real, very terrifying things one could purchase at the ABC Show. Don’t ask me why. They were in a catalog I found near a trash can by the bathrooms. I wondered if this company also had a pending meeting with our Barnes & Noble buyer.
After the show, I followed-up with the buyers we met. Especially our Barnes and Noble friend. I wrote that it was great to meet her and I totally understand her assessment that we weren’t ready for prime time yet. In fact, I forgot to mention to her that we’d heard that before, and we were just wrapping up a redesign of the packaging. I was getting some final mockups next week, and when I did, I’d send some photos over to her. Of course, there was no redesign underway. So now I had a week (including the weekend) to redesign the packaging. I threw myself into a full study on the project and got founder approval. I’d still heard nothing back from the buyer, so I kept cranking. I printed designs and built fake boxes, photographed them, and sent them off to the buyer. Again, I heard nothing back. For weeks. She didn’t reply to my follow-ups. I was bummed. We took another chance and that didn’t work, either.
Three weeks later I got an email out-of-the-blue from Barnes and Noble. It was a PO from their purchasing department with instructions on how to register as a vendor. They wanted 500 units for a test run in a few stores. We did it! It all worked! Except, wait, was it because of the packaging? Because it would take time to print the new sleeves for reals and get 500 existing boxes unwrapped and repackaged. I wrote to ask if they expected the new packaging. I wrote everyone – buyer, purchasing, underlings, interns. No one would get back to me. So, we shipped the order in the old packaging.
I wish this story ended with something cool, like, “They sold out in minutes and the buyer took us out for a fancy dinner and we swapped stories and laughed all night long”. But what happened is usually what happens when you’re a small business working with a behemoth. We heard nothing. As a vendor you get sales information every week. Or at least you’re supposed to. We didn’t for a really long time, so I wrote to everyone in the organization to fix it. Finally, months later, I got a spreadsheet from them and the total units on hand were incorrect, and sales were listed as none. We asked which stores they were in, and they couldn’t say. After a while, I had to turn my attentions elsewhere. About 6 months later I got an email from Barnes & Noble’s purchasing dept. They were planning a reorder, and they wanted to know if we had enough units in stock. I couldn’t believe it. I wrote back again and again, saying yes – we were ready to go. Then I got an email alerting me that there was a new buyer. So I called her to say we were so excited to supply her with more Starlings, and she said, “Oh, we have no intention of ordering more Starlings.” I never heard from them again. And that, my friends is how most big box adventures end with a 😐.
DAVE SOPP – Creative
Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com
