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
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