The show setup...

Stephanie and I arrived in Bologna and headed straight to the show for setup.  Cosmoprof  Bologna is a GIGANTIC show!!!  Imagine the largest trade show you have participated in and multiply it by 20. 20 large pavilions to be navigated all full of beauty products.   Heaven!!  Once we finally found our booth space in the US Pavilion, we set to work.  One of the first problems we encountered was that I immediately noted that there was not tester unit in the shipment!!  We could not believe that we were half way around the world and we didn’t have a tester unit.  An OMG! moment. 

It had been awhile since I had setup a trade show, especially without any knowledge of what our booth would look like, what size it would be, etc.  Basically we had a pallet of random cosmetic products…and I had to create something out of nothing! Thank goodness for the extensive training I received from the master herself, Christy Thurston, at displaying cosmetics to create interest.  I did not make it happen as quickly as Christy would have, but I eventually succeeded…in 4-5 hoursJ.  I sent Stephanie to get some fresh flowers to liven up the booth a bit.  She was seriously gone for two hours!!  Apparently they charge exorbitant prices to rent potted flowers that they pick up at the end of the show and reuse for the next show.  Genius, right?    

Lastly, we were in need of some major branded images.  We have such beautiful model photos that show our cosmetics and we did not have one photo to display.  All of a sudden I remembered that I had randomly set up my idisk on my iPhone a few weeks back where I had stored all of our model photos.  Thank you, Apple!!  We went to the service desk and ordered prints.  I was able to email the links to the photos through Mobile Me to the service desk for printing.  Technology is AMAZING!!!  We were not sure what would arrive exactly because we were not familiar with the materials that were available.  The next day, the guy showed up with our images on sticker-like material.  It was so cool.  He mounted it right to the wall as if it had been painted on.  We were watching in amazement.  Next year our booth will look so much better because we can use our images on all of the white walls and really create something spectacular.  I can’t wait!!