MandelGatlin337

My trade show exhibit experience began at an early age round the dinner table. My father, Joseph LoCascio, would get home every night with fascinating stories about designing and building displays and exhibits at various Nyc exhibit houses where he worked as graphic artist.

If the projects he worked on were completed he would take the household into New york city and show us the results of his artistic handiwork, which often included IBM's Madison Avenue window displays, Crane's display of new bathroom/kitchen fixtures, Allied Chemical's lobby displays, and various displays at the New York Stock Exchange and the World Trade Center. A great many other Sell Gold Irvine CA of his could be on display at industry events at the New york Coliseum, Waldorf Astoria, or the New York Hilton.

My admiration for my father's artistic talents started when I'd be invited to join him for his local freelance work on weekends. I'd help him load the automobile along with his art supplies and then watch in amazement as that he laid out and hand-lettered a bank's new window sign in gold leaf, or a company's name on a truck door, or a new sign for a local church.

The exhibit building business was cyclical, and there were times when work was scarce and some shop workers must be let go for a few weeks. Other times there is too much work, Cash For Gold Irvine CA which required hiring more people and working overtime and weekends to perform exhibits.

My chance to assist my father at Exhibit Craft, Inc. in Long Island City, came when the shop was on a full-time time-table, including weekends, to perform multiple exhibits in time for the National Hardware Show in Chicago.

I jumped at his offer and was excited to not only be making $1. 50 an hour at the age of 14, but in addition to get to work with my father and commence learning the exhibit building business from the ground up. Could work that first week-end - and many more that followed - included cleaning silk screens and squeegees, resurfacing art tables with new paper, sweeping the floor, watchfully peeling frisketed graphic panels, and mixing paints.

I knew immediately that the exhibit business was where I needed to pay my career. During high school and after military service I worked at Exhibit Craft, Inc. working my way up the ladder, including Silk Screen Production, Assistant Production Manager, Shipping and Receiving Clerk, and Assistant to the Purchasing Manager.

A major career transition came when ECI won the new Olivetti Underwood account and needed an account executive to manage their multiple product exhibits for significantly more than 40 industry events per year. I applied, interviewed, and got the work. To my amazement, I soon found myself in planning meetings at Olivetti's corporate headquarters at 1 Park Avenue in New york.

At 22, I was enjoying a dream job, learning the ins and outs of being an exhibit account executive and looking to Gold Buyers Irvine CA the near future when, unsuspectingly, ECI was sold to IVEL, which is today a part of Exhibit Group. IVEL then moved the ECI plant to Brooklyn, New York. For me, it was unreasonable to work in and travel to Brooklyn as I still enjoyed living an almost carefree and independent lifestyle at my parents' home in Bergenfield, New jersey, where I spent my youth. But if moving out for a job was absolutely essential, I thought moving to California might be a much better choice.

With an eye for adventure, travel, and an urge to begin fresh, I sent a resume out to Stewart Sauter, an exhibit builder and show decorator in San francisco. I was hired following a great interview. I had contracted Stewart Sauter often times previously to set up and dismantle Olivetti Underwood's exhibits and had established an excellent working relationship with Mr. Tony Panacci, who I would work for. My job was supervising the setup, servicing, and dismantling of all exhibits sent to Stewart Sauter from exhibit houses from through the country.

My tenure in San francisco was short-lived, nevertheless, because while setting up exhibits at the Fall Joint Computer Conference at Brooks Hall, I met Mr. Del Kennedy, Advertising Manager at UNIVAC Division of Sperry Rand. He wound up offering me a job as their Corporate Trade Show Exhibits Coordinator in Bluebell, Pennsylvania.

Having the opportunity to jump from the vendor side of the business to the client side was a dream I had developed as I watched the entire staff at Exhibit Craft organize and tidy up the shop in preparation for one of its client's visits. One day I believed to myself, "Someday I wish to function as client. "

UNIVAC built and sold computers. Their trade show exhibit philosophy was to use live theatrical presentations, developed by the highly talented Hardman and Associates from Pittsburgh, PA, showing just what computers could do. Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman, creators of the cult film "Night of the Living Dead, " developed scripts, scenery, and AV materials, and hired and trained actors and a complete professional production crew to efficiently present UNIVAC's computer presentations. We staged the presentations on an hourly schedule in a theater with seating for about 60 visitors. If the presentation ended, the doors would open and visitors would walk through a display area where salespeople, managers and tech support team professionals made personal product presentations, answered questions, and filled out sales lead forms for extra information or sales calls.

UNIVAC's marketing experts understood early on that in reality some type of computer was just a machine and that it was the power of its various applications that made the most sense to booth visitors. In the often cacophonous trade show exhibit environment, getting attention and making prospects and customers comfortable while sharing complicated and often esoteric information required total control of the exhibit environment.

A year later I accepted employment with Memorex (which stood for Memory and Excellence) in Santa Clara, California, as their Corporate Manager of Industry events and Exhibits. This included supporting their Video Tape, Computer Media, Office Products and services, and Computer Peripheral business units. Right after arriving, Memorex decided to launch new audiotape services and products and I began working on their introduction at the Consumer electronics Show in Chicago.

The online marketing strategy for this crucial first trade show exhibit was to facilitate a dynamic live demonstration presenting the audible differences between new Memorex cassettes and the thing that was then on the market. We had a need to show prospects how Memorex cassettes would outperform recorded music when compared to reel-to-reel 3M and BASF audiotape, which during the time dominated the global audiotape market.