While it's not unusual for a piece of exhibitry to go missing from time to time, one can usually find some sort of workaround that attendees never notice. However, when your client is in the flooring business and the missing component is the booth's carpet, you can't just slap down any old piece of shag.

Our client was a commercial flooring company at the HD Expo, a trade show and conference for hospitality design at the Sands in Las Vegas. Not only were they exhibiting their flooring in a beautiful 40-by-40-foot booth, but they were a key sponsor and donated flooring for the conference's hospitality areas, welcome centers, hallways, etc. Since the client is the flooring expert, its team headed up the design, shipping, and installation of the exhibit's carpet. To guarantee everything was in place prior to install, our client had all the flooring shipped to the advance warehouse. The only notification we got was that the freight had arrived on time.

The show opened on a Monday, and our supervision and local labor teams arrived Saturday morning to rig the booth's hanging structure while the client's crew was busy installing carpet around the convention center. Our group completed its work before lunch, when the client's team was set to take over laying out the booth's flooring before we installed the exhibit. While we were eating, we started getting worrying questions from the client's labor crew, e.g., "How large is the space again?" and "We're supposed to cover the whole floor, right?" Something was up, so we hustled back to the exhibit hall. It turns out the company's production team miscalculated the total square footage of product needed, and there wasn't enough carpet for the exhibit. That's a bit like showing up to a dog show with no dog. Worse yet, since it was Saturday afternoon, the client's home operations were closed.

After weighing our options, the only viable solution was to fly the carpet in from Atlanta early on Monday morning via Delta Dash, the airline's speedy (and spendy) delivery service. Assuming there were no flight delays, the carpet would arrive just a couple of hours before the show opened.

In the meantime, our team finished installing the rest of the exhibit, minus the crucial component. Early the next morning, the client delivered the carpet to the airplane, and soon after, we sent a team to the airport to nab the ship-ment as soon as it hit the tarmac. Back at the Sands, we made arrangements for a crew to pull the carpet through a side door near our exhibit.

The plane landed on time, and as soon as the first delivery hit the exhibit, the installers started working – along with every sales and marketing rep who had ever laid carpet before. Where they could, teams of workers lifted exhibitry to run carpet underneath. Other times, installers had to cut around larger components. It was barely controlled chaos.

Right before the show doors opened, the installers packed up their tools. We had a beautifully carpeted exhibit, and the hordes of arriving attendees never knew how close we came to an embarrassing disaster. We just swept that little secret under the rug.