I realized last night after a discussion with a friend regarding our booth selections at Toy Fair that I never talked about picking a booth.  There are a few good things to consider when choosing your booth.  First of all, the first time out, you don’t get much of a choice.  Don’t be discouraged by this, it’s a seniority thing.   Each year you will accumulate points that give you a higher ranking and therefore a better booth selection.  Even so, keep in mind these few pointers: 

1.      DON”T GO NEAR A POLE.  You are going to be told that the pole won’t obstruct your view or the pole will give you more space between you and the booth next to you.  Sounds good right?  NOPE.  These poles are about 4 feet in diameter.  Unless you’ve been to a show there and have seen the placement of the booths, odds are the poles are close enough to the aisle to completely obstruct you.  So what is going to happen is your buyer will be walking down the aisle, they look at the booth before yours, and then see a pole.  Their eyes will then turn to look to the other side of the aisle.  Considering your booth is likely 10×10, it takes all of 4 steps to get completely past you.  Within 2 steps, a buyer’s eyes are already looking down the aisle at the next booth.  So in essence, the pole causes the eyes to go away from your side of the aisle and by the time the buyer looks back, he’s past you.  I’ve been near a pole, I watched this happen for 4 days…trust me on this …..don’t go near a pole!

2.     You want to look at how the buyers are entering the area.  In regards to the toy fair, they will be coming down an escalator.  Get on the aisle where the escalator comes down.  They will walk down that aisle first.  If you can’t get on the aisle that is an obvious entrance point (these aisles will fill up faster) then look at how people will flow through the space.  Try to stay away from the back or side sections.  The more central you can be, the better.

3.     Look at the other companies and where they are positioned. Often times you can see the placement from the year before.  Try to position yourself next to bigger, more well known companies.  They will have buyers who will be seeking them out and in return, will find you.

4.     A corner booth is worth the extra money.  But they are very hard to come by.  A corner booth gives you traffic from 2 directions.  Not everyone goes up and down every aisle and this will expose you to people who either wouldn’t have gone down your aisle or might have missed you because you didn’t listen to me and took the spot near the pole. 

For those of you attending the Toy Fair, make sure your applications are in!  The sooner you get the application in, the higher you are in the pile for booth selection.  Early bird gets the worm!! 

“The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.”

Debbi Fields
Founder of Mrs. Fields Cookies 

Gwen Austin, RC Art Toys, Inventor of the Color Bug™  www.rcarttoys.com  

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 10:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Toy Mom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.