Exhibiting @ World Maker Faire New York 2014 (USA)
After attending the Detroit Maker Faire a few months back, I decided I had to see what it was like on the other side of the booth and decided to become an exhibitor at the World Maker Faire New York 2014. It was quite an experience!
I cut and assembled without using any glue, my Eiffel Tower out of 3 mm hardboard (video below of all the models in the picture). I didn’t have much time to get things organized for the show so my booth did look a bit sparse but the important thing in my mind is that I made it after driving all day to get there to setup.
I had a whole day to setup and explore the grounds but after meeting-up with some old friends and dragging my physical books over to my booth, I realized I only needed about an hour at most. I brought everything down from Canada in my car so room was at a premium. I was first going to sell physical models at the show but about a week before, decided against this due to the high price point and ordered some books instead to sell. On that setup day, I walked around to see how the other booths were coming along, here are a few pics.
3D printing was MASSIVE at the Maker Faire, even more in New York USA than in Detroit (USA) which I previously attended. Every major manufacturer of 3D something or other was representing at the show!
I found this PVC pipe tent rather interesting, the construction looks dead simple and the room inside was huge considering how little material there is actually involved with building this structure!
Anyways, back to my experience as an exhibitor!
I was there alone which meant I had to be physically at my booth all day during the entire show from opening to closing and my voice was gone after the first day. I don’t know how many thousands of people I spoke to and inbetween the waves of visitors, I’d speak to my closest booth neighbors to get an idea of their experiences during the show. It was a massive learning experience for me, it’s probably been close to 20 years since I last had an “exhibit” of any kind and I doubt I’ll do it again anytime soon.
For these kinds of shows, you really need to be more than one person, standing all day greeting people. I did meet a lot of customers who visited my site and knew about me which was great but also a lot of kids who couldn’t help but lunge for the Eiffel Tower. When you have a glueless model worth a few thousand dollars, in cutting time, it isn’t a good mix with small kids who want to touch everything and stick it in their mouths.
One thing that did surprise me greatly was the fact that many people were scanning my book with their cell phone and buying it online rather than getting a physical copy at my booth! I’d say more than 80% of my sales were online in this manner which I still find rather odd. I’m the type of person who, when something presents itelf, I get it right away.
Other observations are that I’m far better at these shows as a visitor than an exhibitor, there were so many people I wanted to meet-up with during the show but simply couldn’t because I was stuck at the booth. I was stuck as I couldn’t leave the booth and by the time people left the faire grounds at night, most of the exhibitors had already closed-up.
Probably the next show I attend will be the larger one in California early next year, it will be as a visitor and not an exhibitor. Even if I had somebody who could attend to my booth, the vast majority of the questions I was fielding were technical or design related which isn’t something that you learn overnight. I did sign quite a few of my books though which was fun – I’ve been running CNCKing.com as a virtual company for 7 years and to bring it back to the real physical world, books and all, was interesting. I rarely get to actually meet my customers with that business, shaking a few hands and catching-up was fun.