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