Inventing for the Rest of Us

We just got back from a fantastic trade show called Inpex. Known as America’s largest invention trade show, this Pittsburgh based show brought in several thousand attendees and hundreds of exhibitors. We had traveled to many a trade show, but this was the first one where we actually hosted a booth. To get people to stop by our booth, we took pictures of them in a giant light bulb hat. We’ve posted the pictures from the invention show on our website and MySpace page.

For those of you inventors or entrepreneurs deciding whether to host a booth or not, here are some things to consider:

- Hosting a booth will get expensive. I’d say triple the cost of the booth space itself, and that’s a good estimate for how much you’ll spend on the whole trip. You need to buy equipment, print banners, hire someone, UPS anything too large to carry on the plane, etc.

- That said, the decision to host a booth should come down to how many conversions can you get per $ spent. If you just visit a trade show, yea it will cost you less, but you may only get 50 names. If you host a booth, it may cost you a bunch, but you may get 300 names.

- It also depends on your personality. If you visit a show, you’ll have to walk up cold turkey and make your pitch to anyone that will listen. If you have a booth, you will still have to grab people out of the aisle, but you’re more in control because you have the booth and they don’t. So if you’re a people person, either way is good. But if you’re, hmmmm, let’s a say less of a people person, maybe a booth will be more natural.

Those are some thoughts I thought would be helpful to trade show newbies. Stay tuned because next time I’m going to write about a great reality TV show I found last night (and it’s not American Inventor).

Bryan Daigle