Chair Time With Eric Trine, Vol. 3
An advice column for creatives. This month: Are trade shows worth it?
By Eric Trine, as told to Lila Allen
Each month, we’re inviting our community to submit their conundrums—big, small, petty, logistical, professional—for a second opinion. Need to know when to call it quits on a project? Or how to scale your crafty hobby into a career? Or what to do when your product gets knocked off? Over the course of two decades in creative business, Los Angeles–based industrial designer, curator, and Opinionated Man on the Internet Eric Trine has seen it all—and isn’t afraid to tell you what you need to know.
I run a small product design studio in the Midwest. I’ve been considering participating in a fair like ICFF, but I’m undecided on whether the investment is going to yield a real return. When is it worthwhile to participate in these kinds of events?
I used to think that a single show was going to make or break my furniture business—that the right person was going to walk down the row, see my stuff, and I’d get a huge opportunity and the whole thing would blow up. A decade of doing these shows later, I now see it as more routine: Talking about your work is a part of the job. Being exhausted (which you will be) is a part of the job. There are a lot of different avenues you can take to find customers. Trade shows are just one of those lanes.
The issue right now with the trade show landscape is that it’s not exactly clear where customers are coming from. At Afternoon Light this year, for instance, there weren’t any badges—I had to be really diligent about asking every single person who approached my booth and gathering that intel myself.
Sometimes I hear designers complain that people just walk by their booth without stopping. You can’t let that happen—I don’t let that happen. Think about it almost like a website in real life: you are the user interface. If someone walks by and sees you with your head down, sitting on your phone, that’s bad user interface design. I joke that it’s a little like selling makeup at the mall: I stop people walking by and I tell them who I am, I ask them who they are and what they do. Are they students? Architects? Looky-loos? Writers? You need to know who you’re selling to and tailor your pitch to them.
In my booth, I always let people sit in the chairs on display. Even that is a distinction in itself—people go, oh, these are chairs to sit in; these are chairs for specifying. I talk about the projects my chairs go into, because creating an imagined space and context is an important part of the pitch. I point out my kitchen counter stool and tell them that it’s my best-selling item, that it works well in small spaces, that New Yorkers love it and I always have to bring it to the shows in New York. That immediately paints a picture. At these shows, keep in mind that you’re also selling yourself: That beyond the product, there is a person attached. A customer can reach out to them, and that can make the experience different.
I recommend looking at a trade show not just as a place to sell, but as a kind of feedback loop. It’s a place to receive a lot of data from real people in real time. It’s an invitation to a conversation. This year at Afternoon Light, I brought a super-low meditation chair. No one had ever seen it before, and it was like a Mad Lib in that everyone brought their own narrative and ideas to it. I kept hearing from parents that they thought it’d be great in a kid’s room. Ultimately a dad bought it, and sent me a photo the next day of his kids sitting on it. That’s the use case. So if you take a swing at a trade show, use it as a place to learn from your audience.