Come on, dude. Aim a little higher.
Sent from my aHole using Crapatalk
Can we get back to sharing horrible trade-show stories? All this “but you are even more” stuff is pretty dull.
Oh – and at least with older versions of Tapatalk, it is easy to turn off the ad. It can be hard to prevent your phone from “autocorrecting” “its” to “it’s”, and to pick the correct one of “your” and “you’re”. That seems like an especially dull sort of thing to insult people about. Maybe even duller than “nya nya, you can’t afford an iPhone”
(and fyi, I purchased my full-featured android phone up front, not through some e-z payment plan.)
So, my favorite trade show story is the woman who wanted to preach to me about her lord and savior Jesus Christ. At the Joint Math Meeting (joint between the math society that’s mostly for college professors and the math society that’s more interested in high school teachers.) I listened for a while before expressing my lack of interest and trying to get her to move along to someone else’s booth.
I think it’s within his power, particularly if he wants to continue insulting others’ intelligence.
mmm
My wife and I ran into Peter Capaldi outside his hotel room at a Dr. Who convention in Dallas. We sent him a bottle of wine, which I assume he drank.
:rolleyes: Next you’re* going to ask for his SSN, shoe size and favorite position!
::stomps off for 12 hours
*I tried to type “your” but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Dangit. I scrolled through the whole thing hoping to eventually learn what the OP sells. I think it is RVs. Displayed with the awnings opened, and patio furniture beneath.
Or maybe those fancy outdoor built-in grills with bar seating.
So it must be your charismatic personality attracting the “slobs” like flies to shit.
You want to know what he sells??!?
Obviously, you just want to get him fired!
Drama. He sells drama.
He’s practically giving it away.
Given which meetings you were at, you should have told her you would be happy to give her a listen, as soon as she got her God existence theorem published in a reputable journal. 
I have a couple interesting stories from the show I vended at last weekend. It was a consumer-oriented show themed for pet owners to shop pet products and participate in fun events like doggy dock jumping and agility.
Along with thousands of dogs of all shapes and sizes, a few cats, a couple birds and lizards, one couple had a monkey. They were looking at my interactive puzzle toys marketed for cats, looking for something to challenge the monkey but seemed to not want to talk to me or answer any questions about the monkey other than to tell me what kind it was. It was some kind of macaque. Although it was very cute, my opinion is that monkeys make terrible pets, so I don’t really approve. (Not that I would tell them that.)
I had a small display of rabbit toys hung on a rack. They are different shapes of wooden blocks strung on plastic hoops with plastic “wiffle” balls and bells. The balls and bells are just fun but the wooden pieces are for bunnies to gnaw on to keep their teeth short. A really ignorant lady came up to look at them, turned and asked me if they were dog toys. I told her they were rabbit toys. “Oh, I thought they were dog toys.” She went on and on about how her little floofy likes to chew on wood, you know how some dogs do, so she thought they were dog toys. I just froze a polite smile and nodded until she went away. (She wasn’t really interested in buying, just talking about how cute her dog is eating wood.)
Sadly I took a loss on the show. I note that when these things are promoted to potential vendors they only talk about the foot traffic volume/ how many shoppers they draw. I know they can’t cite any kind of sales volume to you because it depends on so many different variables. But I think they could do some analytics to help the vendors estimate ROI better than simply foot traffic. For example here are some variables that they can gather for number crunching:
From vendors who participated last year: onsite sales amount (expressed by the 100’s if they don’t want to be specific), age of business, type of products sold, estimated interest shown (number of people who stopped to look and/or talk), best selling product at the show, worst selling product at the show
… and then analyze the trends over a few years and you’ve got some pretty good business intelligence. You could do a similar survey of the shoppers at the show: amount spent, products purchased, products found interesting (but not purchased), products disinterested in, etc.
I think most such shows - open-public draw, especially free - are a wash for 90% of the vendor participants, with success only for those selling food or whatever niche is in the sweet spot for the attendees. Either it’s worth it for exposure and advertising, or it’s probably not worth it at all. I hardly ever hear of anyone who consistently breaks even or better under the circumstances, and that’s with diligent booth staffing and attention to visitors.
So, should people talk to you or not?!
I had a dog who liked to chew on wood. She and i were in a constant battle to keep wood out of her mouth. She would try to discreetly nibble on trees when she thought i wasn’t looking.
Sure, but you’re not there to be a socializing resource. Polite chat is one thing; being monopolized by someone is another.
Public shows and expos tend to draw the bored, the low-income and the lonely, the more so the lower the entry bar is. Almost none of these people are going to buy; they’re there for the free samples and giveaways and the entertainment and the chance to talk to someone. You can’t be rude to them, but you can’t let them monopolize your resources, either. Tough job, and one of the reasons such shows are low return for vendors.
Yes, and my male greyhound occasionally chews bits of firewood in our back yard. That doesn’t mean you encourage it by buying him wooden toys to chew up. That’s actually quite negligent. He can get splinters in his mouth or jammed between his teeth.
Yes, this. I didn’t mind talking to her. It’s just that she was so proud about how her dog eats wood.
By contrast, the day before I did let a man monopolize my time, because things were slow. He practically grilled me about my cat toys, for about 30 minutes. Then just before the end of the day he came back and grilled me some more. But he did buy one before he left that last time. I was amused by that: he made me work my ass off for that sale. I kind of respect that. 