Tampa Bay RV Super Show Wrap-up and Fort Myers RV Show Setup Day

Thursday, January 21 - North Fort Myers, FL

We arrived here in Fort Myers on Monday afternoon. Since we were not able to begin our setup until Wednesday morning, we had two glorious days to relax in the warm Florida sunshine here in Fort Myers. Wilson and Beasley appreciated the "down time", because they got to sit outside and enjoy the weather, as well.

To recap Tampa, approximately 50,000 (+/-) attended this show. Most were seasoned RV show attendees and behaved accordingly. Others were only there to see what they could get for FREE! After a particularly busy onslaught at our booth, the vendor in the booth next to ours told me about one older gentlemen who "grazed his way through" every one of of our samples, then took a handful of animal crackers (which we put out for sampling our "sweet treat" dips), then proceeded to walk over to the next booth, look around, then ask the vendor at the booth "got anything for free?", as he munched on our crackers. In the 5-day show in Tampa, we went through 80 pounds of pretzels, and 8 pounds of animal crackers. It got so bad with people taking animal crackers to sample the savory dips and cleaning them out that we removed the cookies altogether, and only served pretzels!

I can't tell you how many asinine remarks I heard during the course of the 5 days about our "NO DOUBLE DIPPING" signs. I got so tired of hearing the stupid remarks that I had to walk away from the booth for a while. One pea-brained idiot actually asked if he could use all ten fingers, would that be considered "DOUBLE DIPPING"? I just looked at the idiot and turned away. I actually believe that some people should take a course on attending trade shows where vendors have promotional items available for the attendees. If you are going to take the freebie, at least be courteous enough to listen to the vendor's speil. Instead, they try to take the items without being detected. Geez! But, I have to tell you on that the evening of the opening day in Tampa, a dinner was held for all vendors (free), and they awarded "door prizes". Kathy won the very last, and biggest prize, $100! Kinda took the sting out of all the negative stuff that came later.

Before I forget, to see pictures of the vendors at the Tampa Bay RV Super Show, simply click the link below:

http://www.tampabayeye.com/rv-show/01-16-10/index.html

OK! Enough about Tampa! On to Fort Myers. I have included pictures of our setup process at the end of this blog. Setup day was Wednesday and the show opened this morning at 10:00AM. This was a very busy day for The 'DIP'lomats! Right from the start, we had crowds around our booth all day long. We had the only "free food" booth at the show where you could graze your way around our booth. The people attending todays opening day were seasoned RV show veterans, and behaved as they should. We had a very successful first day, and only went through 9 pounds of pretzels. We have 3 days to go here, and we are looking forward to each one. This is a good show for us, as we are with other vendors we have worked with in the past 3 shows, and we have made many new friends.

To top it off, our booth is the best looking booth at any of the shows we have attended, to date.


Stay tuned to this site, as updates will be coming regularly (I hope).







Here is the link to the web album for this entry:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/FortMyersRVShowSetupDay?feat=directlink

The "SUPERSHOW"

Monday, January 18 - Fort Myers, FL (Martin Luther King Day)

We have arrived in Fort Myers from Tampa. Our trip took approximately 2 hours, leaving Tampa at noon and arriving here at the Civic Center in North Fort Myers at 2PM.

This blog entry will cover the Tampa RV Supershow at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa, FL.

We left Port St. Lucie on Sunday, January 10th, at noon. We spent most of the morning loading up the motorhome at our storage unit. Our trip to Tampa was uneventful, except for the fact that we had to wait in line at a Flying J fuel stop in Tampa for over an hour to get propane. Based upon our experience here, we should have been prepared for what we encountered at the RV Supershow. While waiting in line for propane, people with 20lb. tanks kept cutting in front of us in the line. Several times, I had to get out and go over and rap on their windows to tell them where the end of the line was. Several people looked at the length of the line and decided not to wait for propane. Others refused to budge!

SUPERSHOW Recap:

The show started on Tuesday with "Industry Day", where all the vendors and dealers get to walk around and check out the other vendors and dealers booths. We had to be in our booth (at least one of us) during "Industry Day", in case other vendors wished to purchase dips. This was probably the longest day of the entire 5 day event.

Wednesday was opening day for the public. According to our information, there were well over 11,000 attendees on Wednesday! This "grazer" is a person who starts at one end of the samples display and tries every one of our flavors, some more than once, then moves on to another vendor display. We had so many "grazers" on Wednesday and Thursday, that I had to go out and purchase another 65 bags of pretzel sticks, hoping that would get us through to the final day of the show. We made it!
But here's what I learned during these last 5 days in Tampa - people are inherently greedy and feeling entitled to do as they please because they paid to gain entrance to the show. Some observtions: We use large containers to serve our pretzels and cookies for sampling the dips. People coming to our booth would reach into these containers and pull out handfuls of either, to the point where we went through 12 pounds of cookies (we buy the 4lb plastic containers at BJs or SAM's clubs), and 40 bags of pretzels from Wednesday through Thursday evening. On Friday, we attempted to cut down the volumes we were going through by putting tongs into each container for people to use to get a pretzel or cookie. What we observed was that they would put the tongs into the container and try to get as many pretzels/cookies as possible, thus dropping half of them either into the dip samples or on the floor! Some people even grabbed handfuls of either and continued walking toward the next booth, without even sampling the dips. By Friday, we discontinued putting out cookies, only pretzels. This helped, somewhat.

What I learned from this show was that children, especially the younger ones, have to be watched very closely. Our containers for the pretzels and cookies are very tall, so much so that they are really too high for children to get anything out of using the tongs. Now, you would think that parents would be aware of what their children are doing while the parents are sampling the dips. They are not, nor do they care! As a result, we have to watch them and try to keep them from reaching their little hands (who knows where their hands have been) into the containers (both dip and pretzel/cookie), or "double-dipping" (what small child understands the term "double-dipping?). At times, we have to reach out and physically prevent them from dipping into a container after they have taken a bite out of the pretzel they are holding. Some parents are visibly pissed that we would have the audacity to touch or reprimand their child and they verbally assault us, others apologize and take control of the child. One such confrontation on Sunday afternoon almost came to blows when a father accused me of "terrorizing his 5-year old". A scary moment, indeed!

We have not had time to tally up the results of our first big event, but we feel that, in spite of everything, we had a good show. Most of the attendees were very friendly and in a "buying" mood. We met some new friends, and some old friends (vendors), whom we hope we can remain in touch with. Most of them have been doing this for many years, and they know the ins and outs of these shows, which are good ones, which are not-so-good ones. This is valuable information for us, since we are just starting out. We are looking forward to the Fort Myers show, which starts on Thursday morning and runs through Sunday afternoon. I will post another entry following that show.

From Fort Myers, we will be heading up to Ocala for another show beginning on January 28, and continuing through Sunday, January 31. Stay tuned!

All in all we had some fun, met lots of people and made some $$$. We find that we are meeting and making friends from all over. As we travel, we hope to visit new friends all over the US.


Here's the link to the web album: http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/TampaRVSuperShow?authkey=Gv1sRgCKCopoaBy9np-wE&fat=directlink