- Join the Broadcast Media Marketing Group here
- Exhibitor Insights – Tips For Managing Trade Show Freight Logistics
- Exhibitor Services – Important Reminders
Cindy: Hi. I’m Cindy Zuelsdorf with NAB show Exhibitor’s Webinar and Kokoro Marketing. Today we are looking at how to save money on logistics and avoid extra fees. We’re going to get into the new unlimited material handling, what that means to you. Electrical, hanging sign details, and more. Welcome, everybody. No matter what size your booth is or what size your company is, this episode today is going to help you out and benefit you and your NAB show. Our special guest today is B.J. Enright, the president, and CEO at Tradeshow Logic. Welcome B.J.
B.J. Enright: Good morning everybody. Thank you.
Cindy: I’m so glad you’re here. B.J. you’re working with NAB, and you’re here to help us understand all about logistics. Let’s get right into it because we were talking about the new unlimited material handling and how that will help us make our expenses more predictable. Can you tell us about that?
B.J. Enright: The NAB is very excited. In response to eh Exhibitor Advisory committee, we learned a lot about what exhibitor’s pain points were and conducted quite a bit of analysis and research. NAB is just really excited to launch this year the unlimited material paneling. Which for $3.85 which you all paid for at the time of your booth space, when you purchased your booth space you paid for your unlimited material handling. You get … let me back up and say what material handling is in case somebody doesn’t know. It is the unloading of your materials from your carrier at the dock, delivery to your booth, storage of your empty containers, return of your empty containers, and then reloading of those materials back onto your carrier at the close of the show. You would’ve previously paid Freeman for those services. Now you’ve already paid for that with your booth space when you paid for your booth. That’s a pretty exciting thing, and it is saving exhibitors overall collectively more than 40%.
Cindy: We just popped a slide up here that underscores what you’re talking about and how you set up your priorities around that.
B.J. Enright: When we heard back from the exhibitor advisory committee, they pointed us in the direction of what they thought exhibitors greatest pain points were. What we did was we conducted research both by analyzing all of the exhibitor’s orders, as well as speaking to your exhibitor point of contractors and learning more not only about how much did you spend and where did you spend it, but what just really bugged you. If you look at this chart real quickly, you can see that material handling was the thing that bugged you the most. It’s where you spent quite a bit of money and it’s also what provided you with the greatest pain point. That’s where we started. Then electrical and hanging signs were right there at the top of the list so we focused on solutions for those. We’re also working on the internet and some other things for even next year. The work doesn’t stop.
Cindy: Just to underscore, you talked about that 40% savings. I’ve been hearing about that. Can you just maybe underscore that a little bit?
B.J. Enright: Sure. Some exhibitors will save much, much, much more than 40%. Some exhibitors may have not used material handling in the past. They may have elected to hand carry their items in. In fact, some exhibitors told me stories that you can’t even believe what they did to avoid material handling. Stories of storing and off-site storage places and taking millions of trips. You don’t have to do any of that anymore.
Cindy: A lot of us have done that.
B.J. Enright: Yes. Yes. People will go as they have told my team and me to great lengths to avoid paying material handling. Now you can have cart service even, or you can have your carrier unloaded at the dock for just $385 is what it costs for a ten by ten. That’s a bargain.
Cindy: If somebody has a meeting room instead of a booth space, does this apply to booth space? What about other venues inside of the convention center or even off-site at some of those hotels and things?
B.J. Enright: It mostly applies to the booth spaces and outdoor exhibits. If you bought a space inside the exhibit halls, any of the exhibit halls, or you bought a space outdoor, your unlimited material handling is included. If you have a meeting room in the exhibit hall that you paid for, then what you should do is ship your materials to your booth and then you can hand carry them to your meeting room and that is included in that fee. If you have a meeting room or you’re doing an event that is offsite at one of the hotels and you’re gonna need some assistance with material handling, I would recommend that you contact Freeman and get a quote for that service. It will likely be a time of material basis. It will be based upon what you’re moving when you’re moving, how you’re moving it, where it’s going. You should definitely call Freeman for that.
Cindy: That’s good.
B.J. Enright: Not many exhibitors who had meeting rooms in the past either in the convention center or offsite in the hotels actually used material handling service. That will be a very few exhibitors that, that probably applies to.
Cindy: I’m so impressed that your group at NAB show really went to the exhibitor advisory committee and looked at the priorities. I love hearing that because it means that we’re really looking at what’s important to the biggest number of people and solving for that is very fabulous.
B.J. Enright: I have been involved in lots of exhibitor advisory committees in my life. I have to say that NAB’s exhibitor advisory committee is amazing. It’s amazing for a couple reasons. One, they’re just really dedicated and committed and they speak very openly and candidly about what the issues are. They’re also not afraid to own them. The exhibitor advisory committee represents every size exhibitor in the show. So from small to large, your voice is being heard on that committee. We talk about all the issues and the impact that every solution that we have, how that’s gonna impact the smaller exhibitor and how that’s gonna impact the bigger exhibitor because it is different.
Cindy: I was so lucky to be on that exhibitor advisory committee two different times actually. It’s true. Both times that I was on I was representing, I think one-time small exhibitor and one-time medium size. It was great because we did reach out to different people and get input. If there’s anybody on the call who’s interested in being on the exhibitor advisory committee, you can hit Nick up and find out how the process works to get your name in the cue and run for it or apply to be on that committee.
B.J. Enright: I do think that there are some open positions actually at the moment. Be ready to be committed because this committee is no joke. They work, and they care. It’s a great group.
Cindy: Just let’s take a moment. You talked about your experience with a lot of different exhibitor advisory committees and shows. Tell us a minute what your role is with NAB show.
B.J. Enright: What my role is with NAB and what Tradeshow Logic is really when exhibitors were communicating to NAB what their concerns were, NAB came to us and said that they wanted to transform the exhibitor experience. They wanted to really dig into those issues that really people have almost been material handling. It can never be fixed, it’s just part of our life. It is what it is. We’re stuck with it. It can never be changed. NAB didn’t believe that. They said, no. I’m tired of hearing this. What we want to do is we want to make changes. Not just surface changes, not just band-aids, but we want transformative change. They wanted to do that in a very smart way by listening to the exhibitors and really digging down to understand what was beneath their pain points. Not just that the price was too high, but what was really driving exhibitors and their exhibitor point of contractors crazy.
Cindy: For all of you on this call, have you experienced that where you’ve had an issue in the past and you’ve seen it get resolved or at least addressed by NAB show? Just chat into the chat box and let us know your experience. We really want to be sure we’re addressing everything. By the way, there will be tons of time at the end for Q and A. As we go through our topics here, throw them in the chat box. If we don’t get to them, we’ll circle back at the end on Q and A. One of the things B.J. that kind of relates to the unlimited material handling is a question that I’ve heard sometimes. What’s the difference between shipping and material handling. I wonder if you could touch on that.
B.J. Enright: Okay. Shipping and material handling are different. Particularly if you’re an international exhibitor you might feel like they’re the same thing because your stand builder may ship your, store your display, ship your display, unload your display, and build display on in the same place. Domestically in the United States, the shipping is really your carrier. If you send it through Yellow or Mayflower, or Freeman Transport, or any of the official carriers that are listed on NAB’s website, that is your carrier and you will still pay for shipping. You’ll pay that carrier for shipping. Material handling, which we talked about is the unloading of that shipment and the delivery to your booth and the storage of your empty containers and the reverse, that is what is included in your space fees. A couple things that are super important for you guys to remember. This is in a blog about budgeting and logistics if you click on logistics in the exhibitor blog, you can see it.
Here’s where you could pay some additional money. If you do not coordinate with your carrier and make sure that your shipment arrives on your targeted move-in day, you will be charged $14.50 per hundred weight based upon a 200 pound minimum per shipment. NAB show, if you’ve not been there, if this is your first time, it’s huge. It’s really important the target schedule is really important when everything is moved in, in a very logical order so that it can be done efficiently. We left that fee in place, that off target fee in place to really incent exhibitors to make sure they come in on their target day. You can find out your target date through the exhibitor manual. If your target date doesn’t work for you, you can actually submit a request and change that. Another place that you can actually pay and this might be something where you just want to pay. If you ship your materials to the advance warehouse, the delivery of that material from the warehouse to the convention center is covered. That’s already in your material handling. What is not covered is the storage.
If you wanted to ship your materials in advance to the advance warehouse and store them, the advance warehouse will automatically bring it in on your targeted move in day so you don’t have to worry about your target schedule if you ship it to the advance warehouse. That will happen automatically. That cost is $6 per hundred weight for the storage. Another reason you might want to ship through the advance warehouse is because you might have a carpet, you might have a hanging sign, you might have something that needs to be done beforehand. That would be a really smart way to spend $6 of hundred weight and send those items to the advance warehouse and have them be stored. I think another really important thing is small packages. Small packages are included in your unlimited material handling and you don’t have to worry about them not coming in on your target move-in day.
Cindy: That is great info. Did you guys all find that helpful? Just going through the differences between, I really appreciate that. Thank you B.J..
B.J. Enright: You’re welcome.
Cindy: Nice. Hey, another topic that seems to come up all the time is electrical. That’s one that I definitely dealt with setting up the show and during the show. Can you touch on electrical and what we should know about that for the upcoming exhibition?
B.J. Enright: When we reviewed exhibitor orders and when we spoke with exhibitors, what we found was that the price of an outlet wasn’t what was making them frustrated. It wasn’t a point of pain for them as much as all the materials that went with an outlet. Exhibitors didn’t understand why if they got an outlet, why did they have to pay for an extension cord and a zip tie and a half hour of labor in order to run that cord from one place to the other. What we did was we actually combined all of the materials into the price of an outlet. Now, because some of the smaller exhibitors maybe didn’t have unlimited material, maybe didn’t use material handling in the past. Maybe they didn’t save. Maybe they even had to pay $385 to have unlimited material handling. What we wanted to do on the electrical, we really looked at the small exhibitors as well on the electrical. We offered for exhibitors a low, low, never before, never seen in Las Vegas rate of $74.59 for a five amp outlet. If you’re in a ten by ten booth or a ten by 40 booth, an in line booth, then you can take advantage of that $74.59 outlet which includes the materials and the floor work. That’s about a 17.5% decrease from what you would’ve paid for an outlet last year.
Cindy: We just threw to the slide there so everybody can see the really great data that you put together before he webinar today.
B.J. Enright: On average I think in general exhibitors have paid, the price went up 3% but it includes materials. Exhibitors will save and a little bit later after we talk about hanging signs, we’ll show you a random invoice that we did with exhibitors. We did do a lot of analysis to see who would benefit and who maybe might not benefit. We’ll show you what happened in that invoice when an exhibitor didn’t have to pay for the materials related to their electrical outlets.
Cindy: Wonderful. If you’ve got questions on electrical, throw them in the chat and we’ll dig into them at the end on the QA. Just to circle back, a moment ago you talked about a small package. Somebody asked a question, what is a small package? What’s the definition of that?
B.J. Enright: Actually I’m gonna have to go back to my blog real quick for a minute here so that I can remember. I think it’s 30 pounds or less, but let me …
Cindy: We can put that in the show notes at the end too. It’s totally fine.
B.J. Enright: I think it’s less than 30 pounds. Nick might know the answer to that one.
Cindy: As you’ll see in the chat, Nick’s info is in there. If you have specific questions that we don’t happen to get addressed today during the webinar, you can hit Nick up and he’s gonna take care of your specific question and needs. Also, we have B.J.’s email here as well and we’ll put that in the chat for you. Should we talk about hanging signs? One of my favorite topics. I certainly have been at NAB show and my hanging sign got there early. It went up there great. Other times it didn’t go up great and we had issues and got to try to figure out what the rigging package was and all that stuff. Tell us about hanging signs and how much better it is now.
B.J. Enright: Hanging signs really incorporates rigging. That also can be your trust, your motors, your lights, all that. On NAB, more than most shows in America, the rigging and the hanging is it really can be a point of pain. One of the things that exhibitors referenced as a point of pain on very much like the electrical was not necessarily the rate of the crew, but more all the materials and supplies that go with it. Actually Cindy, if you could put up the slide real quick that shows all the materials.
Cindy: You got it. I was just moving to it.
B.J. Enright: What exhibitors told us when we spoke to them, they were like, I don’t even know what these things are. Term buckles and crossbite. I’ve been in the business for a lot of years and what exhibitors told us was that some of them had pages, and pages, and pages of zip ties and different materials. The slide that we have right now, it actually shows what the rates are for crew. One of the things that is great that NAB cares was able to do is to make sure that the crew price did not increase. It does now include all rigging supplies. In addition to that, the crew, there is no overtime. The rate for the crew is a blended rate. That means that no matter when your sign or your rigging is done, it all is occurring at the same rate. That’s very important for NAB because again, the show is immense. It’s really important to know when … so that exhibitors are not punished just because their sign had to go in or the rigging had to happen on a Saturday or Sunday or after five o’clock. It’s all done in a very orderly way in a way that it makes most sense logistically.
B.J. Enright: One of the other things that you’ll find is that the trust and lighting packages, which many exhibitors took advantage of. Those we were able to get to just simply reduce the prices to 8 and 9% so that exhibitors can take advantage of getting that trust through Freeman and through the official contractor. There’s some advantages to doing that so that your trust can go up before you move in. If you have trust and lighting needs, you should definitely plan to call Freeman and definitely coordinate your requirement so that your move-in … everything happens before your target day and you can move in seamlessly.
Cindy: Who here on the call is doing a hanging sign? Just give us a shout out in the chat box. Yes if you’re doing a hanging sign, just so we get a rough idea as we forward here. We have more info for you as we’re going along. I’ll go back to B.J.
B.J. Enright: If you can go to that next slide too, just fun and put it up. It shows all the, what a hanging sign or rigging. That is an example there of all the things that you should not see on your invoice anymore as they were rigging or hanging signs. What is a cheese burrow anyway? Or a para link? My goodness gracious. I’ve been in this business for more years than I’m willing to say and I think I would fail a test on what most of these things look like. Exhibitors did not want to audit invoices or really have to explain what those different things … audit what the different supplies and materials were relating to hanging signs.
Cindy: Should we hit your next slide? It might be my favorite one.
B.J. Enright: Absolutely. One of the things that NAB asked us to do was to, as part of our data analytics was to go through different sized booths, different exhibitors and say what would be the real impact to them of the things that we did. With material handling you may or may not remember at the beginning of this year we actually calculated for every single exhibitor sent them a personal note as to what the difference in their material handling would be under the new program. That was done before the space sales so that they could have a very transparent view and understanding of what their new costs and what their savings would be. We did the same thing with an exhibitor invoice for electrical and rigging. What you see on the screen there, we basically went through and took a random exhibitors invoice and looked at all the things that they bought in 2018 related to electrical and hanging signs. Then you can see, I know it’s a little bit small. Everywhere you just see a dollar sign in that first 2019 column is where those items went away because there were no longer billing for them.
B.J. Enright: For this particular exhibitor, it ended up being 9% savings. Even better, they wouldn’t have to audit their invoice and track all these things and figure all these things out. It makes it much easier for them to budget. For this particular exhibitor, their savings, they would’ve paid $7894 in 2018 and about $7200 in 2019. About a $700 savings.
Cindy: Wonderful. I love hearing that. We have people coming into the chat saying, yes they are doing a hanging sign. We’ve got several people here who are saying yest to that. Wonderful. I’m just scrolling through here to see if we have any questions about hanging signs specifically. Let’s go ahead and jump to our final topic and then after that we’ll be going to Q and A. Our next topic is about booth builders, stand builders, exhibitor appointed contractors. You had some great information about that B.J..
B.J. Enright: One of the things that I think is really unique about NAB and NAB cares is that in addition to talking to the exhibitors, it was really important to NAB to talk to the exhibitor appointed contractors because they are a very valued partner to the exhibitors. If you’re an international exhibitor, you might call that a stand builder, booth builder, independent contractor, all kind of the same terminology there. In speaking with the exhibitor appointed contractors, one of the things I want to make sure you guys know is that it’s very important that you make sure that your exhibitor appointed contractor understands these new changes and these new solutions so that they can help you take advantage of all of these and the implications that they have. One of the things that we learned when we did our research was that some exhibitor appointed contractors charge a percentage. Typically, on average it’s about 25%. It could be a little more. It could be a little less depending upon your requirements. On your orders, if you have your exhibitor appointed contractor order for you, the way that they charge for that service is to add 25% as an example onto your orders.
Guess what? Material handling, which was an enormous part of your bill previously, it might’ve been the majority of your bill, now your exhibitor appointed contractor is not able to charge 25% on top of that. That may just be a savings to you because it’s already done. That may be something that was covering a service that your exhibitor appointed contractor was providing. No matter what, you want to make sure that you’re have a conversation with your exhibitor appointed contractor about that. Most exhibitor appointed contractors were completely excited even though they charge a fee on top of material handling and they do make money on top of it. Really at the end of the day, they understood why NAB did it, which was because they want you to spend your money on your displays, on your marketing, on the things that are gonna get you more attendees in your booth. Most exhibitor appointed contractors truly understand that material handling wasn’t gonna help you get more attendees to the booth and, or make your booth more interesting.
They’re on board, but make sure that they do understand it. Additionally, what you should know is that many of the exhibitors that are using exhibitor appointed contractors use that exhibitor appointed contractor to provide carpet, rental exhibits, custom exhibits, signs, things that are not exclusive on the show floor. That means that now that you don’t have to pay for material handling, remember that is actually creating a much more competitive playing field for you. You can look at prices that are in the exhibitor kit. There’s many advantages to use the official contractor. They’re there. They’re always on site. You can always talk to them. Things will typically come in on target. There are also reasons to go out to bid and make sure that you are getting the most competitive rate and that you are getting the exact, maybe what’s in the kit isn’t exactly what you need or you want something really special. Now you’re able to do that and because your material handling is included in your space fee, you don’t have to worry about that being added onto whatever you get from your own selected contractors. That’s a huge benefit related to unlimited material handling that you might not have known about.
Cindy: I love the fact that we have choices. We can go ahead and use the official contractor and we can go ahead and work with our favorite booth builder if we want to. It still works and there’s still a way to do it. Having options is huge.
B.J. Enright: You can also keep everybody competitive and even out the playing field. That’s great too. Whether you use the official contractors or whether you use your own independent contractor.
Cindy: Wonderful. Gosh. So much information. I’m just curious what is the top question that you get from exhibitors. You said you’ve had a ton of exhibitors contacting you recently. What does everybody ask you?
B.J. Enright: I think the top question is really what we covered which is what’s included and what’s not included with unlimited material handling. If I left you with one thought, it would be make sure you know what your target data is. Understand that if you don’t ship your materials to the show on your specific move-in day that you will have a fee and it’s completely avoidable. Make sure that you communicate with your carriers. Make sure you know what your target move-in date is. Then you can exhibit as cost effectively as possible.
Cindy: Yay. We’ve talked about the new unlimited material handling, electrical, hanging signs, and some other logistics. Let’s jump into some Q and A and see if people have some questions. We’ll go to that. One of the things that just came in B.J. that somebody is asking about, they just wanted to double check on the small packages. Is there a fee or not a fee? Just maybe an underscore on the small packages. Very interesting topic.
B.J. Enright: There is definitely not a fee. Nick, I don’t know if you had time to research for me. Again, I believe it is 30 pounds or less. That is included. That material handling is included. What’s important about the small packages because it’s pretty hard to figure out when those are gonna arrive. We love FedEx and UPS small package services. They’re not always willing to deliver it exactly when we want it to. You don’t have to worry about those shipments arriving on your target date. You still pay FedEx and UPS for the shipping, but your material handling is included as part of your unlimited material handling.
Cindy: We’ll put the link to that in the show notes. We’ll send the replay of this webinar out to you and everybody and make sure that in the helpful links there’s a link to that so you don’t have to sweat looking it up now B.J. if you don’t want to. Nick, if you happen to have it, throw it over to us. That’d be great. We have put some other links in the chat that reference the blog post that you B.J., and you Nick had talked about. Those are in there. One of the questions that came back was about electrical and 24 hour service. Can you comment on that?
B.J. Enright: Yes. 24 hour service you still would pay for. You’ll find that on the forms in the exhibitor kit. It’s just the materials, what you’re not gonna have to pay for is for the floor work related to running the cord that goes to your outlet or zip ties and little things like that, that would go with electrical.
Cindy: Then some of the exhibitors need to keep their equipment on all night. Is there a difference in that fee and how that works?
B.J. Enright: That’s the same as the 24 hour service. That is in the exhibitor kit and the rates are there. It is a higher rate to keep that electrical on all night.
Cindy: Good, good. I think that answers your question. If not, come back to us on the chat and we will circle back to you on that. Are materials and labor included in bulk power orders? Any of these if we need to look up and come back to people on that, we can totally do that. We’ll see if you know about that one.
B.J. Enright: Like on the invoice that we showed before, the labor that is included and if you looked at your invoice from Freeman last year, the way that they differentiated is they call it floor work. The floor work, which is typically what the labor that is related to plugging in your outlet. You’re not gonna pay for that labor. If however you have some lights that you need to attach to trusts or you have other electrical work that has to happen in your booth, you will stay pay an hourly rate for that. That would just look like I think on the Freeman invoice it typically says electrician
Cindy: We’ve had a couple of people-
B.J. Enright: If you’re having trouble figuring that out, you can ask Freeman or shoot a question to NAB cares and we can take a look at your invoice. We have your invoices from last year so we could help you sort through that.
Cindy: That’s great. The fact that you’re willing to take a look at last year’s invoice and sort through it is super helpful. You guys should totally take advantage of that. That’s awesome. Regarding the shipping, we’ve had a couple people come in and just ask, hey where can I get this info and stuff. Would you guys like the slides that B.J. put together? If any of you want that, put a yes into the chat box and we’ll go ahead and add that to the show notes if it’s useful. Then you should have all the shipping information in your manual. Is everybody able to log in and get the exhibitors manual? If you’re having any issue doing that, chat into us now or hit Nick up and he will help you get logged in because that’s where all the info lives as well.
B.J. Enright: I don’t know if it would be helpful Cindy, I know we’re coming up on the end here. I do have the manual up. I can show really quickly where you go if you would like that.
Cindy: Let’s do that. You want to just share your screen?
B.J. Enright: Sure. That’s sounds like-
Cindy: If you feel like it, it’s the little green share button there. It will share your whole screen.
B.J. Enright: That is good. You can see all my stuff. That’ll be fun.
Cindy: Thank you. That’s wonderful.
B.J. Enright: What I have on the screen here is the blog, but let me go to … let me slip over to the Freeman manual. Cindy, can you see my screen okay?
Cindy: Yes. That’s great. I see it. You guys all see that?
B.J. Enright: When you go into the Freeman … into the NAB show exhibitor manual, right here where it says shop products and services, that is where you would order everything for your booth. One of the questions I get a lot is where is electrical. It’s right here underneath utilities. Then one of the other questions and this is a little bit more difficult to find. If you go to the main place where you first enter into the exhibitor manual and you go to forms and brochures, what you will find in forms and brochures is you’ll see the target floor plan. These are all very helpful. You will also see a link for the cart service and POV map. This will show you where you deliver in the marshaling yard and the advance warehouse and shipping labels. Some of the things that are listed on these forms are some of the things that exhibitors ask me about the most, where do they find them. That’s under forms and brochures. Then I think NAB and Freeman did a great job. You can see right here in the middle where it says search your targeted move-in date. If you click on that, it takes you to the overall schedule. Right over here is this little target move-in time window. You need to type in your booth number. Don’t do it lowercase like I just tried to because it won’t work.
Cindy: I’m so glad you’re talking about this because someone just chatted in and said, hey there’s two deadlines for my shipping. Ones the 27th of March, the other one is April 1st. What’s the difference? Maybe you could touch on that while you’re here.
B.J. Enright: Say that. One was the first and one was?
Cindy: March 27th and April 1st in this person’s example. She’s trying to figure out what’s the difference between those two shipping dates, shipping deadlines.
B.J. Enright: I am not really sure. Most of the ones that I have researched have had one deadline. I’m not sure if she’s referencing the advance warehouse date, which is advance warehouse receiving started March 4th. It has to be there …
Nick: The advance warehouse stops on the 27th. After that, it’s direct to show.
Cindy: That’s the difference then for the person who asked about that. The 27th is the advanced whereas the first is your other ship date.
B.J. Enright: Nick, if you give me a real booth number, I can just type it in and then they can see. I thought I knew.
Nick: Yeah. I can certainly.
B.J. Enright: If anybody wanted to chat your booth number.
Cindy: Oh yeah. Chat your booth number in if you want to be the example here. Steve, 5013. All right.
B.J. Enright: 5013. All right. Let’s see what happens. Don’t make me a liar here. Oh, it worked. Then what happens there, it’ll show. You do need to do a capital letter and you do need to type it together. Don’t put a space and it’ll show the company name and your target date. In this case it’s April 3rd is the day that their shipment needs to arrive beginning at 8 AM.
Nick: If you do ship advance to warehouse, your materials will arrive by your target move-in.
B.J. Enright: Exactly.
Cindy: Question about that Nick. Somebody is asking B.J. about the materials handling and advanced shipment. How does that work with your hanging signs? How does that all tie in together?
Nick: That’s a great question.
B.J. Enright: For your hanging signs, what we would highly recommend is that you ship those in advance to the warehouse. It’s worth paying the $6 per hundred weight storage fee. If we go back here where it has the forms and brochures, what you will see here is if we go down here and look at the shipping labels, there is an advance warehouse just plain old shipping label. You can download that and put that right on your shipment. If you have carpet that you want to ship to the advanced warehouse, download. That’s again, worth shipping it to the advance warehouse because then that means it’ll be delivered to your booth and be there when you get there on your target day. Hanging signs, same thing. If you ship to the advance warehouse and you’re coordinating your hanging signs through Freeman, you may have your hanging sign done before you even get there. It might be worth paying six dollars per hundred weight to have that go to the advance warehouse. That’s where you get those labels.
Cindy: Yeah, special label, don’t use a different label. One needs to use the special hanging sign label.
B.J. Enright: Yeah because that’s the only way that Freeman will know amongst all those millions of shipments in that advance warehouse that it’s a hanging sign and needs priority. Very important.
Nick: One thing I chatted into the chat earlier everyone is there was an article on our blog that I wrote about target moving and about the differences in shipping. One thing, it sounds so simple, but it causes so many problems if you don’t do it. Make sure you use the proper labels. Not only that, your filling out those labels completely with your booth number with your company name. Make sure that you put those labels on each side of every crate you’re using. Don’t just throw one on there on the side. Make sure that they’re taped and adhered to the boxes very well. Make sure that they are on there, that they are fixed well because I can’t stress how important it is that those labels are not only completely filled out, but also very easily visible. As B.J. said, there are tons and tons of shipments in the warehouse in advance. Please make sure everything is clearly labeled.
Cindy: Great. I love that you’re showing this. Perfect. Do you have more to go over on this or are we feeling like we-
B.J. Enright: Unless anybody has questions.
Nick: B.J. and Cindy, I just want to plug a few other programs that we didn’t quite have a chance to get into for a quick moment.
Cindy: Go for it. We’ve got a couple more questions and don’t worry guys. We’ll circle back to that. Go ahead Nick.
Nick: I just put into the chat this is for the first time we have started a new program called the product of the year awards. As I said, this is the inaugural launching of this. You can enter if you are launching a new product at the NAB show. You can enter into this contest. We’re very, very excited about it this year. That link will have all the details of how to qualify, how to register, what the incentive is for that. In addition to that, something I plugged before. Our guest pass program, which many of our exhibitors use and are aware of. Your guest pass is right there on the home page of your exhibitor dashboard. That is your LB code that you’ll be able to invite exhibitors to use your code for a free exhibits pass giving them full floor access for free at no charge. At no charge to you or to the attendee. You’ll be able to see. That’ll be able to generate leads for you seeing who actually used your code to register. Up until March 22nd, they can redeem that code for free at no cost. After that, it’s a $50 fee per attendee.
Nick: Then two other quick things. Another first time program is our show and sell program. You can actually physically bring products into your booth and sell them on the floor. Details are in the exhibitor manual for that. You do have to pay Nevada state sales tax of 8.25%. If you’re talking about having a tangible, on site ROI right there, actually being able to sell your products on the floor for the first time. In the past you could take advanced orders, but now you can actually sell them right there at the show. One other quick thing. It is the first of March. This Friday is our EAC deadline. B.J. mentioned exhibitor appointed contractors. If your contractor is not yet registered, they can submit their profile and their certificate of insurance via our, excuse me. Via our EAC portal. I’m gonna throw that link in the chat in a second, if your contractor is not registered. Then finally if you are a first or second year exhibitor, Cindy offers
Nick: You can have a private call with Cindy. A 20 to 25-minute call with
Cindy where you can … if we can throw the link for that into the chat again. That is for first and second-year exhibitors. You can register. Tell Cindy what your biggest marketing challenge is and you guys will discuss it and she’ll give you a plan of action moving forward. That’s all I have so thank you.
Cindy: Wonderful. Love that. Does anybody else have any other questions? Throw them in the chat now. I think we hit them all, but if you have something else, we want to take care of it. Good, good. I believe we are wrapping this up. Thank you so much everybody and we’ll see you in Las Vegas and have a great show. We’re all here to make sure you have the best show ever. You’ll see contact information for B.J., for Nick, for me in the chat. Let us know what we can do for you. All right. Have a beautiful day. Thanks everyone.
