Sometimes Procrastination Does Pay Off

Back in the Fall, while attending one of the tradeshows I had to go to, I saw a few vendors with what I thought was just the best booth display setup I had seen (short of the companies who invest $gazzillion in their booth displays which is just not feasible for little ol' me). It essentially is a modular bookshelf made up of squares that you could adjust and reconfigure as you desired. So you could build what looked like a pyramid out of the boxes, or a simple "bookcase" of boxes. The flexibility the system gave you was unmatched from anything you could rent from the tradeshow company. But it gets better - the entire system could be broken down into flat pieces and was relatively light which is key for shipping from tradeshow to tradeshow. Add to that the fact that you don't need tools to put it together which technically would require you to hire a union man at $30/half hour and it really is the perfect system for tradeshows.

I found out that the system came from Design Within Reach (tried to find a photo but it looks like they just took it off their website) and have been keeping an eye on the item. I almost bought it a few months ago when they were offering free shipping which would have saved me about $50 but ended up not doing it for one reason or another. Then yesterday I ended up showing my sister the units and realized that they had been marked down from $245 per set to $95 per set. That's a drastic savings! Not to mention that you also got free shipping. Needless to say I went ahead and ordered them yesterday and ened up saving myself $588 in unit costs and $50 in shipping. That is a pretty great savings! Not to mention, what the units ended up costing me is equivelent to what I typically pay to rent tradeshow furniture at just one show. Which means by the time I hit the second show next year I will have saved money.

Course I just got an email from the company saying that the item is backordered but since they don't charge my card until it ships and I don't technically need it until August I'm not going to worry about it just yet and bask in the glory of my $638 saved plus the additional approximate $400 per show I will save on tradeshows going forward.