In 2021, I was working for Tive, a company that provides real-time supply-chain visibility solutions. Tive was prepared to launch its Real Time Visibility and Condition Monitoring services at that year's EXHIBITORLIVE and was so excited for the show. The product is groundbreaking in that it uses GPS tracking to let customers know where their shipping containers are at all times. I was looking forward to the show, but I wasn't stressed out about it. We had a 10-by-10 booth that I was familiar with from previous shows, and I knew I could set it up in a snap. So I was looking forward to a lengthy lunch and maybe a round of golf after installation the day before the show floor opened.

As I always did, I kept a close eye on our shipping carrier's tracking number while I was traveling to make sure our booth was en route and due to arrive on time. Everything looked like it was going smoothly — the tracking number said the package was where it was supposed to be, and I even got delivery confirmation from the GSC. I booked a tee time.

Sunday morning, as I was leaving my hotel room and heading for the show floor, I decided to check the Tive tracker that was in my shipping container just for the fun of watching it ping from Mandalay Bay. That's when everything went wrong. Because instead of pinging from Mandalay Bay, the tracker told me my package was sitting in the shipping carrier's warehouse, which was more than two miles from the event venue. Even worse, the warehouse was closed until the morning of the show! My dreams of a leisurely day of golf wound up buried in a sand trap.

I sprang into action. The first thing I did was call my boss to see if he was already at the airport. Luckily, he hadn't even left his house, so I asked him to swing by the office and grab a second 10-by-10 we had in the back room and bring it on the plane with him. He agreed and left his house a little early to run that all-important errand. But this didn't solve all our problems. The booth at the office had been designed for a produce show rather than a live-events expo, so the graphics messaging spoke to a different audience. I figured I could work my way around that when talking to potential customers if I had to, and I headed to the show floor, still turning the graphics problem over in my head.

When I got to Mandalay Bay, Tive's head of marketing was there, shocked that the booth wasn't in the process of being set up. I explained to him what happened and showed him my phone so that he could clearly see the tracker was miles away. Being a show veteran himself, he let me handle the hot potato and headed off to tackle other projects he had in play. My next step was to call a couple of my Vegas-based printing contacts and ask them if they could make a graphic for me in 24 hours.

Now, this was 2021. The industry wasn't recovered from the pandemic. Things were moving slowly, and people weren't yet back to work. Add to that another big show happening in Vegas concurrently that was using up all the printing labor, and I was nearly positive that I wouldn't be able to get an updated graphic. But this is where the power of meaningful relationships comes in. I always tell people to network as often as they can and work on developing their LinkedIn relationships because you never know when you'll need to call in a favor. After a couple of phone calls I found someone who could give me print time that day. Things were looking up!

My boss landed in Vegas and headed to the show floor, outdated 10-by-10 in tow. Having to launch a new product with an unrelated graphic was disappointing, but I was just grateful my boss's luggage wasn't lost during his travel! We got the booth all set up and headed back to the hotel for a quick bite before bed. I was so grateful that I had access to Tive's new tracking product. Without that confirmation that shipping cases weren't on the show floor, I would have spent hours doing the all-too-familiar trade show scavenger hunt. You know the one — you start at your booth space and slowly expand your hunting circle in the hopes that your crates were delivered a couple of aisles away. If I had started that process Sunday morning, my boss definitely would have gotten on that plane empty handed before I finished.

The next morning, the show floor opened, the booth complete with a freshly printed graphic. The carrier delivered the correct booth that day, and as soon as the show floor closed Monday afternoon, we took everything down and set up the right display.

Here's where things get funny. I was able to use this experience as a case study for potential customers visiting our booth. I could show them a progress map and the discrepancy between the information from my carrier and the information from the tracking device. When the show ended, my boss said, “Using this as a case study was so effective. How are you going to convince people this wasn't a set-up?” I replied, “Are you kidding me?” My blood pressure was still elevated!

Despite the relatively controlled chaos, EXHIBITORLIVE 2021 was a tremendous success for Tive. Tive won best new product and although we hoped for 30 qualified leads, we got more than 100. We even activated 10 new accounts within a few months of the show. Many of the end users who came through our booth had their own stories about having a portion of their exhibit lost and never found or having to exhibit with an empty space behind them. I owe a lot of our success to storytelling. We were able to show people a shared experience, and that aspect of our trade show experience made Tive very relatable.