Lately I have had so many emails and messages and even a few phone calls from you awesome people who tell me that you are waiting for me to post more booth stuff.
Good news. I have new booth stuff for you.
It's actually from August 2014 NY NOW. Pretty new.
This is the Eleven Point Home Fragrance booth. It was on Pier 94 and the newest brand introduction of my awesome client Scentations Home Fragrance. I love love love working with this company, and am so proud of what we created for Eleven Point. I will post more about the line separately, but let's get to what you are asking for, the booth stuff.
This was a 10"x10" corner booth. As with most of us, they didn't want to spend a gazillion dollars on a booth but, they still wanted a presence. The goal was to create a little wholesale shop where buyers could see the line, quickly understand the line, experience the fragrances and place orders.
The NY NOW show is offering some new options for walls these days, so there was no need for foam board this time. We decided to order the MDF panel option and have them paint it for us, you just need to supply them with the Behr paint color (I chose a charcoal grey). We needed 2 ten foot walls done (since we had a corner). On the Piers we did this through FB International (via the show). The pricing was somewhere around $150 per panel (painted) and we needed 6 panels (they cut them and price them to just a little over 3' each since most of the booths are sold in 10' increments, if you go to Lowe's or Home Depot, they will be 4'x8' and you will pay around $25/panel unpainted), the unpainted was $120/panel. Not cheap. I know.
If you are local, the process they used to make the walls was super simple (explained below) and it could be easily done for WAY cheaper, but, if you are not local, it could be a pain to get this done on your own as the panels are not easy to transport and move around, they aren't heavy, this particular MDF was only 3/8" thick, these panels are floppy and cumbersome and 8 ft long.
If you decide to build a booth like this yourself, I would definitely go for the heavier MDF so that screwing into it wouldn't be an issue if you wanted to hang shelves or anything heavy-ish and remember to get the panels cut to your booth size so they fit your walls, or, you can always take 3 panels per wall and place your middle panel over the 2 others and the empty space, so that there wouldn't be cutting involved (and it looks pretty cool too).
I talked about this method with foam board here
Let's get to it...introducing the August 2014 Eleven Point booth
As mentioned the walls were ready to go - well, almost, when I got to the booth they were still being painted, but, it was done quickly. In a nutshell, this is what FB International did for the walls - they screwed in 2 little silver squared inverted U brackets at the top of each of the panels and simply hung them over the squared bars of the booth structure. (This is new too, remember how the booths were all loose drape over round poles? square now.)
I had ordered a strip of wallpaper that was the same pattern I had designed in the line's packaging to personalize the space - I worked with Murals Your Way for this and used this same idea in all of our summer showrooms. It was easy and quick to install and is actually removable, so it can be used for a few shows if you need. Since my wall paint was pretty fresh, the vinyl didn't stick as securely as I would have liked, so I just added a few staples to make sure it was not going to unpeel.
For the booth sign, I had our graphics printed at Fedex Kinkos and I spray painted an old textured frame gold.
The wall sconces were a fun addition, they are battery operated, and don't shed much light, but they added a nice touch to the booth and didn't require wiring to install, only a plastic pushpin.
I bought several sets (again for all of our showrooms) on ebay. This particular set I sprayed gold quickly, to match the frame and the other booth details (they were originally a bronze color).
The frames on the wall were super lightweight black plastic Ikea frames (with plexi fronts rather than glass) and each one had a fragrance description from the Eleven Point line that I laid out and, again, printed at Kinkos. I had originally wanted to place 6 frames on one wall and 3 on the other, but that didn't happen, so I did a quick adjustment and put all 9 on the same wall.
Since the frames were so light, I used heavy duty velcro tape to stick them to the walls, MUCH faster and more forgiving than nails and hooks.
The cute linen grey bench was a score at TJ Max.
The table is from World Market, a gorgeous extendable table that we will be using for a while and was surprisingly easy to assemble (sign up for their emails and you will get great coupons and free shipping vouchers).
The carpet is from the wonderful Flokati Phil. I have had one of his Flokati rugs in our loft for many years and love it, so I called him to help me find the right one for the Eleven Point Booth. Once I was in the booth, I realized that an oval shape was the way to go, so all I did was tuck the corners under and it became this awesome puffy oval soft addition to the booth.
For the shelf under the Eleven Point sign, I used light metal brackets from Ikea and sprayed them gold, and a piece of wood that I had cut to the length I wanted at Home Depot. I added a coat of wood stain to it to bring it to the color of the other woods in the booth. I stained the extra piece they had cut off for me, and used it as a riser in the middle of the table to add a second layer to the main display.
Since the MDF walls were not very sturdy, I used my foam board trick and placed 2 pieces of scrap wood behind the shelf brackets to screw into - this added a lot of strength to the shelf.
(I would NOT have done a wall of shelves on these walls without doing some serious securing first, and even then, these thin MDF walls are not built for lots of shelving, I wouldn't risk it).
Here are some photos of the process, and the finished booth.
