Another Daytona Expo is behind us. This year was one of the most challenging we have had to get ready for. Overall it went off without a hitch. Both of our pre-sold cage customers where waiting on us just as planned! Almost unheard of!
Wayne Hill did a great job with this show. The new facility at the Ocean Center is great! Loading and unloading was a MUCH smoother experience. Instead of a stressful, rushed situation with crappy parking and over zealous parking “officials” looking to write parking tickets this was well organized with adequate parking. I really did not think this was possible there. I did not have my annual run in with some guy on a John Deer utility cart giving me a bunch of static about how I can not walk across his parking lot. Kind of disappointing I did not get to give him heartburn this year.
Inside, the new facility swallowed up the tables and customers quite a bit better than in the past. I would guess this show has hit its theoretical maximum as far as vendors go at this point. Everyone is in the main room which is great. No more tables in the halls, bathrooms, lobbies, etc. Aisles were very wide and easy to navigate. This is a real help in selling. No river of people sweeping people right past you.
While I am sure some will be unhappy with this show for one reason or another- In my opinion it is the best one we have attended. Our sales were better than ever, we were much more relaxed, we got to talk to more people. About as good as it gets!
Looking ahead- I will be set up with Frank in Raleigh next weekend and White Plains the week after that. We are absolutely swamped with cage orders for the next couple of weeks (??) so it looks like we will be going to WP NY pretty light. Not sure if I can get enough together to warrant dragging the trailer up there. I will make the call on that middle of next week when I see where we are at. If you are needing a rack/cage for that show better speak up real soon.
I am planning an update on the website sometime before the year is out. I have some new shopping cart software I like pretty good. Not cheap but pretty nice. Seems they all have their pros and cons but I think this is a step up. The real challenge is moving the database with all order data/history over. Of course one shopping cart does not know how to talk to the other. Why should there be any type of standard database structure?? Looks like there is a solution for that I will need to test out but if that works then it should not be too bad. Famous last words………………
No tags for this post.
