Anyone who's ever had a personal-grooming mishap understands that it's usually better to just go all in than to try to hide your flub. When you accidently shave a chunk out of your beard, for example, it's probably best to just keep right on shaving. At a recent trade show in Vancouver, we were forced to resort to this type of all-or-nothing solution.

Since this show was my company's most important event of the year, we rented an exhibit property in British Columbia rather than risk any shipping or customs snafus. When my exhibit-house team and I arrived for installation, all of the exhibitry for our 20-by-30-foot booth and every piece of my company's instruments, which analyze genetic variations and biological functions, were already on site. In fact, the exhibitry even made it to the loading dock before the material handlers were ready to transport it to our booth. So my team and I spent a few hours the first morning of setup sipping our coffee and listening as one of Vancouver's gentle, nonstop rains peppered the venue's roof.

Eventually our crates, which had been sitting outside on the loading dock for quite some time, arrived, and setup began in earnest. We made quick work of assembling the framing to which our tensioned-fabric graphics would attach, and soon all we had left to do was to stretch six panels of 16-foot-tall fabric graphics across the frames of our backlit columns.

But when our setup crew pulled the fabrics out of the crates, it became apparent that our crates were not watertight. Every one of our fabric panels was riddled with water marks. Some panels had big old blotches, and others had little dime-size drops. One look at the fabric, and attendees would surely notice that something had gone terribly wrong.

Initially, we tried to dry the spots out of the fabric. But within a few minutes, it was clear that the water had somehow stained the fabric, so even when dry, the spots remained.

We put our heads together for another solution, but to no avail. That's when our installation supervisor stepped in to assess the situation. He'd seen this kind of water damage before and said he had a tried-and-true solution. He didn't tell us exactly what that entailed, but instead folded up the fabric, told us to go get some rest, and left the show floor.

Unbeknownst to us, then, the supervisor took all of our fabric back to his hotel room and submerged it in the bathroom tub. In effect, he "stained" all of the panels so the previous water droplets disappeared. Granted, the material was a smidge darker, but the dreaded stains were no longer visible. He then laid out the pieces to dry on just about every available surface in his hotel room and cranked up the heat. And sure enough, by morning the fabric was dry – and evenly stained. Once installed in the space, the panels blended in perfectly with the rest of our exhibit, and thankfully attendees were none the wiser.