Those of you that have been reading me for a while know that every August, my workplace participates in a furniture trade show in Orlando. It’s kind of cool…you get to meet a bunch of the people that you’ve talked to (sometimes frequently!) on the phone. You get to put a face with the name, which is always neat. Sort of like when you meet people you’ve only talked to online, which I’ve had the pleasure of doing with some of you.

This year, because of our move, I won’t be attending. Ben and Nick will be up in Vermont by then, and I don’t want to leave my girls alone for 4 days (although they seemed sort of eager for me to do so!). But that doesn’t mean that I get out of all of the prep work that goes into the show. What does that involve?

Well, in past years, we’ve printed up nifty little postcards and sent them to our customers. It lets them know that we’re going to be there, and what booth number to find us at. It also lets them know what kind of specials we may be running at the show. Then there’s the endless price lists, tear sheets, and brochures, telling about our current products and promoting new items. And this year, we have some pretty cool new products, including a beautiful new home office group. So I suspect we’ll be printing lots of them. The dreaded tri-fold brochures are the worst…having them printed is the easy part. Then you have to fold them….what a tedious job!

Every year we manage to forget something, and end up doing some sort of emergency print job. Since I’m not going to be there this year, I guess I better be extra careful not to forget anything! It’d be easiest to blame the person not there, lol. Don’t want that to be me. :)

So, wish us luck. It’s been a tough couple of years, the furniture industry has been hard hit by the recession. We’re a small business. The business we do at the show is very important to our company. Let’s hope it’s a good one!

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