Home Show Display

T

treecareinc

We are doing our first home show this weekend. It is the Dayton Home and Garden Show:

http://www.daytonhomeandgardenshow.com/about.html

Thought I would share our display... Ceiling is 32' high to give some perspective. I wish I had time to stain the deck... but oh well. The tree is a white ash and it has EAB activity (common in our area).

I don't even want to contemplate how much tree work we need to sell....
 
Just don't do what I did on my first and last trade show. I had a stuffed squirrel on a fish line that I'd pull and it would pop out of a hollow log and scare people. My saying for that year was "the dead squirrel killed my business". The reason it was my last trade show was because the guy selling universal remotes in the booth next to me drew huge crowds and I might of made a couple sales. Hint; it created a chance to chat up some hot chicks, usually the bored ones from the other booths would come over to see my squirrel. I had one good idea though, I had a bunch of branches that I could demonstrate proper pruning on, but no one cared. Tough market.
 
Nice display, instantly obvious what your company is all about.

I did a show where i backed my booth with cut spruce trees and had a rustic bench in front of them. People either thought i was selling christmas trees or benches.

Boreality, i'll keep in mind your squirrel advice.

I'm planning to appear in a show in a month and put up a tree similar in size to yours (we have a 100ft ceiling so i can put as big of a tree as i can figure out how to support in the booth) and i'm curious to see what gets more initial attention at yours: the tree, the deck or the truck.

For the record, i can't stand shows. We do at least one every year and they get more and more annoying.

Is there even a trade show thread? If not, we should start one.
vince
 
[ QUOTE ]

I'm planning to appear in a show in a month and put up a tree similar in size to yours (we have a 100ft ceiling so i can put as big of a tree as i can figure out how to support in the booth) and i'm curious to see what gets more initial attention at yours: the tree, the deck or the truck.

[/ QUOTE ]

The limiting factor in tree selection was the ability to haul it to the trade show. We struggled to get the limbs pulled in enough to drive down the highway. I had bad information on the ceiling height and we had to cut 10' in length off. I was amazed how light it was... guessing what you see in the picture is under 1000 lbs. We really beat it up pretty bad in transit... it looked surprisingly good after crown restoration!

Quote of the day yesterday was from a new employee who is 19 years old. He said "How are we gonna get that tree down and loaded back up. That's gonna be a nightmare?"


I will let everyone know how it turn out! Thanks for the positive feedback... and squirrel advise!
 
One of the things I learned from a trade shows is not to sit in your booth. Have something for people to take away. A brief flyer that shows what you're all about, fridge magnet along with your business card. Stand just outside your booth and Greet people walking by and try to engage them in conversation about the reason they are attending the show. You'll find out if they are looking to build an addition, renovate a basement, landscape a yard or whatever, at that point you can then ask them about the trees in their yard and the condition they're in. Maybe have a brochure that illustrates the increased value of properly maintained trees, etc...

You could also point out how they can save money by doing the tree work before the renovations.

Good luck with the show!
 
Thats a great looking display! Definitely an attention grabber. The shows that we do have fairly large turn outs and that means talking to a lot of people which can get difficult at times lol. We have a whole whack of balloons with our company logo on them that we give away to kids. Usually the kids will want a balloon and the parents will stroll over to the booth, its an easy way to get attention and start conversation.
Good luck!
 
I once attended a tradeshow where we put up a couple of topropes in a tree we had moved inside, and let the kids climb. Brought a lot of attention with kids in the tree, but had to have 2 men belaying the whole time.
 
Here is the final picture. My wife couldn't stand the raw wood... so she stained it. Show opened last night and ends Sunday. I will let you know how we do.

Thanks for the great feedback...
 

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We scheduled 75 estimates. I am satisfied with that #. It will be interesting to see our close ratio and total $ generated from this show. Probably take a while for the final #'s to shake out.

Thanks for the feedback etc!
 
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