The first day of the show always fills me with butterflies. I was excited, but also a lot nervous! I had silly thoughts like What if I forget how to have conversations with strangers? Or What if nobody visits our booth? But that all ended as soon as an enthusiastic attendee stepped into the booth and oohed and aahed about our cards. Phew! I knew right away that all of that work (from planning to execution) had been worth it.
We had lots of visitors and by the end of day one, we were already halfway to our goal in terms of the number of orders placed! As you can imagine, Erin, Ally, and I were all super excited.
The rest of the show was a bit of a blur. We reached our sales goal on Monday (day two)! It was an action-packed day talking to new customers, old friends, sales reps, and everybody in between. We took turns eating lunch when there were lulls in traffic. We also had a staffing switch mid-day when Erin headed back to Boston and Melissa (our good friend and owner of Print Therapy - go check it out now!) came to help us out at the show. That evening, even though we were exhausted, we headed over to Postable's party on a roof deck. Why didn't I take any photos?! It's always great hanging out with those guys.
On Tuesday, George joined us at the show and we achieved our stretch goal! That was a good reminder that it's always good to have goals and stretch goals. Traffic was definitely lighter on day three, but we still had a grand old time in booth #1421! We told silly stories and had some lovely chats with customers. By the end of the day, I think we were all beginning to run out of steam.
Wednesday was the last day of the show and it was a half day. The aisles were pretty empty and we only had a few people visit our booth. We each spent some time looking around and visiting stationery friends in other booths, so that made the time fly. At 1:00 the show ended and by 1:01 we were breaking down the booth. George's wife, Thy, was ridiculously kind and helped with the breakdown. Altogether, there were six of us and everything went sooo smoothly! The van was packed by 3:00 and we were on the road by 3:10. It took us about 5 hours to get home.
Everything about NSS is exhausting to an introvert like me. But also I truly enjoy talking to customers and meeting new people! I was a zombie for about a week following the show and I'm honestly still catching up with emails and to-dos that were put off, but I also had a lot of fun!
A super huge shout out to our team for MAKING IT ALL HAPPEN!
Thanks for following along on our journey. :)
-April
Don't forget to check out Part 1: Set Up!