The Mock-up; From an idea to a booth

Happy 2015!
I decided not to wait another 2 years before my next blog posting, :-)
I have been asked over and over again - Nadine, how do you come up with fresh booth ideas for smaller companies who don't want to spend a gazillion bucks and who want an awesome booth but with a relatively quick set up and tear down.
Here it is, my (now) not so secret process.
I start with A LOT of thought, much is pretty straight forward, but each case is always a little different. I think about the product that is being sold, how it will be sold at retail, who I want to sell it to, and, what type of a setting suits the product. I go through the obvious list of what the exhibiting company has or has not already done in terms of a booth pre- Nadine.
Do they have a catalog? great photography? full on branding? or maybe things are a little scattered look-wise, maybe we want to make the look more cohesive and pardon the expression "on brand" (ugh). So many questions, but SO important to know before you start to mock things up.
...How big is the booth? (usually my client's booths are between a 10x10 and 10x15), how many products do we need to show? do we want to do a lot of repeat? ie: 12 of each item? if there are only a few items in the line, or, is the line vast and the booth space limited?

Now, what about style? Visual inspiration.
The line could be gorgeous dainty jewelry, but how am I going to get buyers out of the aisle and into this booth to take the time to look at the gorgeous dainty jewelry, when there's a daiquiri machine a few booths down and a clown and puppies? (not quite, but almost)

Does my client's line have great style already? or does it need to find its look? Is there something in the line that can inspire the entire look of the booth, maybe a great photo in their catalog that can get the ball rolling?... How extravagant can I get with this booth? What's the budget? Can we ship in 10ft antique armoires?, yeah, didn't think so.

I happen to think in images, I can build a booth in my head first, literally swapping out fixtures, paint colors and signage with my eyes closed, lying in bed. Odd? probably, but it's how I roll.  Funny thing is, when I was doing my own booths, I rarely did any kinds of visual mock-ups, I imagined my booths and simply made lists. (When I look back on it, I probably would have saved some time by mocking it up after imagining it, but too late now). Most of my clients are not into the whole imagining thing, understandably, they want to see it, or something very close to it, before they show up in the booth, so I create mock-ups, and that is what we are going to talk about today.

I am going to take the initial launch of the lovely Eleven Point - Fragrance Merchants line, this past summer. Before we did anything in terms of a trade show for his newest brand, David (the owner) wanted to see something that he could really sink his teeth into, all the pretty words and descriptions weren't going to cut it, he wanted visuals. Here is what the very first mock-up looked like.

A little background, the line is inspired by nature, the fragrances, memories and experiences David and his family had growing up on the Eleven Point River. The initial launch would show 6 different fragrances in 6 different product categories (white glass vessel candle, black glass vessel candle, reed diffuser, room mist, travel tin candle and fragrant sachet). The line was designed to coordinate in rustic or modern settings, for women or for men. To have a lived-in comfortable, relaxed look with sophistication and elegance, focusing on the amazing fragrances of the line; River Fern, Bonfire, Cotton Creek, Honeysuckle Rain, Coconut Moon (my favorite) and Blackberry.

Charcoal painted walls with the box pattern as wallpaper down each wall, gold wall sconces, signage like the brand's packaging, two perfectly weathered leather club chairs, one large wooden wall shelf, large nested table set and weathered wooden floors. I knew this was simply a jumping off point to get things moving along, it might not all be feasible, but we needed a start. Also, when starting with a mock-up like this, you can really walk through a few orders in your head and really think about what you need in your booth in terms of supplies and what you need to show in terms of product. And yes, it's a wholesale show and buyers know how to buy, but buyers are also regular people who shop too, so I like to think about what I like, what attracts me to a store, how I like to shop.

It just so happened that before doing the Eleven Point booth, reps and showrooms were hired, so we quickly switched things up for the limited space of a showroom. Here are the mock-ups.

Dallas showroom, approximately 8 feet of wall and approx 6 feet of floor. 

Here's the Mock -up

 

in progress

 

end result (very bad photo/color)

Las Vegas showroom, 8 feet of wall with about 10 feet of floor.

 

Wait, what now? I can have ceiling electricity?... we can do this.

They might have a table we can use? it's rectangular? okey dokey.

 

result (excuse the photo quality, it's all they sent me!)

 

 Atlanta - variation on the same theme, again with a round table

You are getting the idea now, right?
For technical info, I use Adobe Illustrator to create these mock-ups, truth be told, I wish I could use Illustrator for everything, it's amazing. But if you are not into the big guns software, you can certainly use other things, or even draw it out, or make your life a little simpler and call us.
(please note that we were NOT present for any of these showroom set-ups, they were done by the showrooms themselves based on our mock-ups, and, they did a great job! This go around of shows, I am getting really detailed about exactly where we want product displayed and on how many samples are sent to each show, you will see that soon, Atlanta is being set up right this second as I type this post :-)

Here are few sources for items that were used in the showrooms - round table in Las Vegas Showroom, battery powered wall sconces were purchased on ebay for all showrooms, custom self-adhesive wallpaper.

Next up, how we tried a few looks before settling on this NY Booth last summer.

Eleven Point - Booth Design

It has been forever. UGH. My apologies.
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

Here's what I did.
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.)

No, they were not super strong and yes, a few of the brackets fell off and I had to have FB come and put them back in. MDF is not the greatest stuff to screw into, often screws don't catch and slip right out, this is what was happening, but it was fixable.

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.